Setting goals for 2020
I’ve never been big on goal-setting. Throughout my schooling, I was told how important it was to set a goal and to do what it takes to achieve that goal. Being a perfectionist who always strives for more, I tend to make my goals either much too small or unattainable moonshots. It’s always go big or go home. But at my position at the Sports Commission, I was fortunate enough to have a boss who helped me set realistic, attainable goals on both a personal and professional level. These past three years, I’m happy to say I’ve been able to achieve just about every goal I’ve set. I want to carry that momentum into 2020, and hope you’ll join me on the goal-setting journey.
The international business major in me always reverts to the SMART acronym when it comes to goal setting—goals have to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Let’s take a look at each of those letters:
Specific: Does your goal have a who, what, when, where, why, and how? Your goal can’t just be to get healthier. Flesh it out a little bit more than that. Do you want to run a race under a certain time? Do you want to maintain a certain weight? If you want to run a certain race time, at what race are you going to do it? How many times a week do you want to work out?
Measurable: Let’s take the goal of getting healthier. What does getting healthier mean to you? Your goal needs to be more measurable. Will you go to the gym a certain amount of times per week? Will you get at least seven hours of sleep a night?
Attainable: This is where I often struggle. I’ll try to immediately go from A to Z, without taking into account B through Y. Or, I’ll set a goal to go from A to B. It’s important to make sure that your goal is something realistic, but not so simple that you’re going to achieve it no matter what. If you’re aiming to run a faster marathon and your PR is 4:00:00, don’t set your goal to be a 3:00:00 marathon. But also don’t set your goal to be 4:00:00. Make it something that’s a challenge but an attainable one.
Relevant: I’ve never been a swimmer or a cyclist. I don’t even own a bike. So it doesn’t make sense for me to set a goal to complete an Ironman in 2020 (although every year when I go down to Fourth Street Live! to watch the IM Louisville finish, it plants a seed that I could one day be an Ironman). Make sure your goals line up with what you want to achieve, not what others tell you or what your training group’s goals are.
Timely: We’re setting goals for 2020. While it’s important to think long-term, for now we’re going to focus on goals that you plan on achieving in the next year. If your goal is to PR at a marathon, when will you start training? When is the race? Make sure your timetable is written down.
I like to think of it more as SMARPT, with a silent P (you know, like pneumonia). The P in this case stands for public. It’s so easy to set goals in our head and forget about them as January rolls into February. But by making them public, your friends, family, and training partners are able to hold you accountable.
Now, let’s set those SMARPT goals and hold each other to them in 2020. While the Louisville Running Company is mainly about running and fitness, goal-setting should be both personal and professional. I’ll start:
Have the Louisville Running Company name attached to at least 10 local races and 5 national races.
Run a 2:45 marathon to earn an automatic qualifier for the 2021 Berlin Marathon.
Read at least one book a month.
Write a handwritten note or letter to a friend or industry colleague at least once a week.
Increase my efforts to give back to the local community. While I volunteer biweekly at the Ronald McDonald House and am an Ambassador for the Young Professionals Association of Louisville, I would love for LRC to support young people or those who don’t have the resources to run (i.e. free 5Ks in community parks, shoe/clothing drives, etc.).
Share your goals with LRC, and let’s help each other reach new heights in 2020!