SMART goals are a five-letter filter — specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, time-related — and the realistic letter is where the framework fails. Doran coined it in 1981 as a management prompt, not a law. Locke and Latham find specific, difficult goals beat vague “do your best.” A merely realistic goal is often a smaller bet.
Key takeaways
- George T. Doran (1981) coined SMART as Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related — a two-page prompt for writing management objectives, not a tested law of motivation, and he said not every objective needs all five letters.
- Locke and Latham (2002) synthesised 35 years of goal-setting research: specific, difficult goals produce higher performance than easy goals or vague “do your best” goals.
- Epton, Currie and Armitage (2017) found a small unique effect of goal setting on behaviour (d = 0.34, 141 papers, N = 16,523), and the effect was larger when the goal was difficult — the opposite of shrinking a target until it feels achievable.
- Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman (2009) warned that over-prescribed goals can narrow attention, invite unethical shortcuts, and crowd out learning when the number is the only scoreboard.
- Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule is the named opposite case: average, “realistic” targets produce average action. Use SMART to specify the shot; do not use it as a ceiling on how high the target sits.
What SMART goals actually are
SMART goals are a five-letter filter for writing an objective so someone can tell what the shot is, how you will know it happened, who owns it, whether the means exist, and when it is due. They are not a personality. They are not a book title used as a page. They are not a randomised protocol. They are a writing aid that escaped a two-page essay in Management Review and became a poster.
This page hangs off analysis paralysis, the Decisions cluster page. An unbound objective — “get healthier,” “grow the channel,” “be more strategic” — is a choice set with no stopping rule. SMART is one way to stop the sentence from sitting as a wish. The sister in this cluster is the 1-3-5 rule: a daily size budget of one big, three medium, and five small. SMART specifies the target. 1-3-5 budgets the day that has to carry it. You can use both. You cannot pretend a vague annual theme is either of them.
The named unused review is Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule, which argues the opposite case: average, realistic targets produce average action. That is not a trial. It is the book this row is built to send people to, because the leak in poster SMART is exactly the ceiling Cardone is shouting at. More of this cluster lives in the productivity library.
Be honest up front. There is no experiment that assigned people “the SMART acronym” versus “not SMART” and measured output. What we have is Doran’s 1981 prompt, a large goal-setting literature that rewards specific difficult goals, a behaviour-change meta-analysis that finds goal setting works better when the goal is difficult, and a set of papers on what happens when the number becomes the only scoreboard. Those findings are why this page exists. They are not a certificate that five letters on a worksheet will save a quarter.
What Doran actually wrote
Doran’s letters were Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related — and he said the acronym does not mean every objective needs all five. In November 1981 he published “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives” in Management Review (70(11), 35–36). Managers, he wrote, were drowning in seminar language and still could not frame a statement of results to be achieved. The prompt:
- Specific — target a specific area for improvement.
- Measurable — quantify, or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
- Assignable — specify who will do it.
- Realistic — state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
- Time-related — specify when the result can be achieved.
Two lines in that essay are almost never printed on the poster. First: these criteria “don’t say that all objectives must be quantified on all levels of management,” and in some staff roles you can lose a better abstract objective in order to gain a fake number. Second: “the suggested acronym doesn’t mean that every objective written will have all five criteria.” The combination of the objective and its action plan, he wrote, is what matters. Serious management should focus on those twins, not just the sentence.
Poster SMART mutated the letters. Assignable became Achievable or Attainable. Realistic became Relevant. Time-related became Time-bound, which is a harmless rename. Achievable is not harmless. It invites a smaller number. Relevant is not Doran’s R. If your template says Achievable and Relevant, you are not running the 1981 prompt. You are running a later HR rewrite that happens to share a vowel set.
| Version | The five letters | What it is for | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doran, 1981 | Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related | A writing prompt for management objectives, plus an action plan | Not a trial. Not every letter is required. Realistic is a check on resources, not a law |
| Poster SMART | Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound | A worksheet that looks official | Achievable often means “shrink until it will not sting.” Relevant is not Doran’s R |
| Locke & Latham | Specific and difficult, with feedback and commitment | A research programme on when goals raise performance | Weaker on complex novel tasks until you have a strategy (Wood, Mento & Locke, 1987) |
| 10X Rule | Set targets far above “reasonable,” then take matching action | The named opposite case: average targets, average action | A motivational argument, not a trial. A number you cannot learn toward becomes theatre |
| Learning goal | “Discover N strategies,” not “hit 20%” | When the task is new and you do not yet have the method (Seijts & Latham, 2005) | A premature performance number on a new task is SMART-shaped and still the wrong object |
Where the framework fails
SMART fails when “realistic” or “achievable” becomes a shrink-ray — a way to pick a number that will not sting — because the evidence rewards specific, difficult goals, not comfortable ones. Locke and Latham’s 2002 review in American Psychologist is the load-bearing paper. Across 35 years of work they find that specific, high (difficult) goals lead to higher performance than easy goals, “do your best” goals, or no goals, provided people have the ability, get feedback, and are committed. The mechanisms are unromantic: a hard specific goal directs attention, increases effort, lengthens persistence, and pulls knowledge and strategies into use. A vague “do your best” does not tell anyone what “best” is, so people under-shoot without noticing.
Epton, Currie and Armitage (2017) then asked a narrower question in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology: when you isolate goal setting as a behaviour-change technique in randomised trials, what is left? From 141 papers and 384 effect sizes (N = 16,523) they found a small positive unique effect, d = 0.34 (95% CI 0.28–0.41). Moderator analyses found the effect was larger when the goal was difficult, set publicly, and was a group goal. That is the opposite of a private, easily-cleared, “realistic” worksheet. If you use SMART to make the number safe, you are using the mnemonic against the evidence that makes goal setting worth doing.
Doran is not the villain. His Realistic letter was “given available resources” — can this person, with these hours and this budget, run this shot. That is an ownership and means check. It becomes a leak when the number is walked backward from comfort: start with what would feel nice to hit, then dress it in five letters. Cardone’s 10X Rule is loud about that leak. You do not have to take his multiplier as science. You do have to notice that “achievable” on a poster often means “already almost done.”
The four leaks
The mnemonic fails in four repeatable ways: the ceiling, the missing owner, the missing cue, and the wrong object on a new task.
- The ceiling. Achievable / realistic as a smaller number. Locke and Latham want difficulty. Epton wants difficulty. A goal you can hit with your current Tuesday is a forecast, not a goal.
- The missing owner. Doran’s A was Assignable: who will do it. A “we will grow revenue 12%” sentence with no name is not SMART. It is a slogan. Assignable is the letter the posters threw away, and it is the one that stops a group wish.
- The missing cue. SMART names the finish. It does not name the first action in a situation. Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006), in a meta-analysis of 94 independent tests, found that implementation intentions — if–then plans — had a medium-to-large effect on goal achievement, d = 0.65. The live sister-in-spirit for that mechanism is implementation intentions. “Publish 12 issues by 30 November, owned by Sam” still dies at 9am if Sam’s first sitting has no if–then.
- The wrong object. On a task you have not done, a performance number (“close 20% more”) can freeze people on a strategy they do not have. Wood, Mento and Locke (1987) meta-analysed goal effects and found they shrink as task complexity rises. Seijts and Latham (2005) argued that when the task is complex or novel, a learning goal — discover a set number of strategies — outperforms a premature performance goal. SMART-shaped sentences still fail here because the measurable thing is the wrong thing.
Why a bad SMART goal costs more than it feels like
A comfortable SMART goal feels like professionalism, and the bill is the work you never aimed at plus the corners you cut when the number is the only scoreboard. The honest cost is not that five letters are evil. It is that a specific number, once it is the score, crowds out everything that is not the score.
Schweitzer, Ordóñez and Douma (2004) ran lab experiments in the Academy of Management Journal and found that people with unmet specific goals were more likely to misrepresent their performance than people told to do their best. The people who had fallen just short were the most likely to cheat. That is not a morality play about salespeople. It is what a scoreboard does when the alternative is to miss. Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman (2009) then wrote “Goals gone wild” in Academy of Management Perspectives: over-prescribed goals can narrow focus, raise unethical behaviour, distort risk, reduce cooperation, and inhibit learning. Their paper is an argument, not a new trial. The 2004 experiments are why the argument has teeth. A SMART worksheet that only counts one number is a narrow goal with a friendly acronym.
There is a quieter cost. A year of “realistic” targets trains the organisation — or you — to bid small. Parkinson’s Law, on this site as work expanding to fill the time, is the calendar version of the same leak: the container you set is the work you get. A realistic annual goal is a container. If you always hit 100% of a timid number, you did not learn that you are accurate. You learned that the number was never the work.
The counter-case, which this page must say: goal setting is not a universal good, and fewer or vaguer goals are sometimes right. Wood, Mento and Locke already showed weaker effects on complex tasks. Seijts and Latham already said to switch object when you lack the strategy. Ordóñez and colleagues are the warning against treating every problem as a missing number. If the stall is endless comparison of options, you are back at analysis paralysis, and another worksheet will not help. If the work is a shift you do not control, SMART is the wrong layer. Do not turn a mnemonic into a verdict on your character.
What a SMART goal looks like without the lid
Keep the filter. Drop the ceiling. Write the cue. Change the object when the task is new. That is the whole method, and it is not a seven-step ladder. A usable sentence names the shot, the measure, the owner, and the date. It does not apologise for a number that would actually change the week. Then it gets an if–then for the first sitting, and a daily cap so the shot has a place to live — the sister 1-3-5 rule is one such cap; how to prioritise tasks is the ranking judgement inside it.
Doran’s own example in the 1981 essay is the shape: develop and implement, by a dated December 31, an inventory system that will reduce inventory costs by $1 million, with a cost not to exceed 200 work hours and $15,000. That sentence is specific, measurable, time-related, and resourced. It is also not timid. The resource line is the Realistic letter doing its actual job — means, not a smaller prize. The missing piece, which 1981 did not supply and 2006 did, is the if–then: after the Monday production meeting, before email, Sam opens the inventory file and writes the first process map. Without that, you have a SMART sentence and an empty morning.
When the work is new, write a learning goal first: “By Friday I will have tested three ways to outline the report and picked one.” That is still specific, measurable, assigned, and dated. It is not a fake performance number. Seijts and Latham’s point is the object, not the abandonment of goals. You can put a performance number on after you have a strategy. Putting it on before is how SMART becomes a panic.
Keep this split in your head: SMART is a filter on the sentence. Difficulty is a filter on the height. If–then is a filter on the first action. Learning goals are a filter on the object when you do not yet know how. The poster mashed the first two together and threw out the rest.
Common mistakes
- Using Achievable as a shrink-ray. If the number would happen anyway, it is a forecast. Locke and Latham and Epton both point at difficulty. Cardone’s 10X Rule is the loud version of the same leak.
- Dropping Assignable. “We will” is not an owner. Doran’s A was who. A goal with no name is a wish wearing a worksheet.
- A number as the only scoreboard. Schweitzer, Ordóñez and Douma (2004) is why this is not a vibe. Keep a quality or learning measure next to the count, or people will hit the count.
- Writing SMART on a task you have never done. That is a performance goal in costume. Write a learning goal first (Seijts & Latham, 2005).
- No if–then for the first sitting. The sentence names December. It does not name Tuesday 9:10. See implementation intentions.
- Treating the worksheet as the plan. Doran said the objective and the action plan are twins. A filled template with no sitting on the 1-3-5 list is stationery.
- Redrawing the goal instead of starting. That is analysis paralysis wearing a mnemonic. Date it. Run the first if–then. Relitigating the letters is the parent problem.
What the evidence actually shows
Every figure above traces to a specific published study or essay. Here is the short version of what each one found — and, honestly, what it does not prove. None of them is a randomised test of the SMART acronym as a bundle.
| Study | Design & size | What it found | Used here for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doran (1981), Management Review | Practitioner essay, two pages; not a trial | Proposed Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related; said not every objective needs all five; action plan matters as much as the sentence | What the letters originally were, and that the poster is a mutation |
| Locke & Latham (2002), American Psychologist | Narrative synthesis of ~35 years of goal-setting research | Specific, difficult goals outperform easy goals and “do your best” goals, with ability, feedback, and commitment as conditions | Why “realistic/achievable” as a smaller number fights the evidence |
| Wood, Mento & Locke (1987), Journal of Applied Psychology | Meta-analysis of goal effects across task complexity | The goal–performance effect shrinks as the task gets more complex | When a performance SMART goal is the wrong object |
| Seijts & Latham (2005), Academy of Management Executive | Research-informed essay on learning vs performance goals | On novel or complex tasks, a learning goal (discover strategies) beats a premature performance target | What to write instead of a fake 20% when you have no method yet |
| Schweitzer, Ordóñez & Douma (2004), Academy of Management Journal | Laboratory experiments; unmet specific goals vs do-your-best | People with unmet goals were more likely to misrepresent performance; just-short was the danger zone | Why a number as the only scoreboard is not a free lunch |
| Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky & Bazerman (2009), Academy of Management Perspectives | Critical essay, not a new trial | Over-prescribed goals can narrow attention, invite unethical behaviour, and inhibit learning | The cost of treating every problem as a missing SMART worksheet |
| Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology | Meta-analysis, 94 independent tests of if–then plans | Implementation intentions had a medium-to-large effect on goal achievement, d = 0.65 | Why SMART without a cue still dies at 9am |
| Epton, Currie & Armitage (2017), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology | Meta-analysis of RCTs isolating goal setting; 141 papers, 384 effects, N = 16,523 | Small unique effect, d = 0.34; stronger when the goal was difficult, public, and a group goal | Goal setting works, and it works better when you do not shrink the target |
Frequently asked questions
What are SMART goals?
SMART goals are a five-letter filter for writing an objective so it is specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-related. George T. Doran coined the mnemonic in 1981 as a management writing prompt, not a theory of motivation, and he said not every objective needs all five letters. The useful half is the filter: name the shot, put a number on it, name who owns it, and date it. The leak is treating realistic as a ceiling. Locke and Latham find specific, difficult goals beat vague do-your-best goals. A merely achievable target is often a smaller bet.
What does SMART stand for originally?
Doran’s 1981 letters were Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related. Poster SMART swapped Assignable for Achievable or Attainable, and Realistic for Relevant. Those swaps are not a finding. Assignable meant who will do it. Realistic meant what results can be achieved given available resources — a check on means, not a licence to shrink the number until it feels safe. Time-related meant when the result can be achieved. If your worksheet says Achievable and Relevant, you are not using Doran’s prompt. You are using a later HR mutation.
Who invented SMART goals?
George T. Doran, then a consultant and former director of corporate planning at Washington Water Power, published There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives in the November 1981 issue of Management Review, pages 35–36. It is a two-page practitioner essay, not a trial. He offered the acronym because managers were drowning in seminar language and still could not write an objective. He did not test SMART against other mnemonics. Later trainers mutated the letters. Credit the 1981 essay for the filter; do not credit it for the poster on the wall.
Do SMART goals actually work?
There is no randomised trial of the SMART acronym as a bundle. What works is goal setting, and the evidence is not kind to the realistic letter. Locke and Latham’s 2002 review finds specific, difficult goals outperform easy goals and vague do-your-best goals. Epton, Currie and Armitage (2017) found a small unique effect of goal setting on behaviour, d = 0.34, from 141 papers, larger when the goal was difficult. Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s 2006 meta-analysis found if–then plans raise follow-through (d = 0.65). Keep SMART as a writing filter. Raise the height. Write the cue.
What is the difference between SMART goals and stretch goals?
A SMART goal, as posters use it, is specific and supposed to be achievable with current resources. A stretch goal is specific and deliberately past current resources. Locke and Latham want specific and difficult, which sits between those two. Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule is the named opposite case on this site: average, realistic targets produce average action. Stretch is not always better — a number you cannot learn toward becomes a scoreboard for cheating or theatre. Use SMART to name the shot. Use difficulty, not comfort, to set the height. Use a learning goal when the task is new.
Why do SMART goals fail?
They fail when realistic or achievable becomes a shrink-ray, when the number is the only scoreboard, when the task is new and you still wrote a performance target, and when the sentence has no cue for the first action. Wood, Mento and Locke (1987) showed the goal–performance effect shrinks as the task gets more complex. Seijts and Latham (2005) argued for learning goals when you have not yet got the strategy. Schweitzer, Ordóñez and Douma (2004) found unmet goals raised cheating in the lab. The mnemonic did not cause those failures. Using it as a ceiling did.
Should I still use SMART goals?
Yes, as a filter, not as a lid. Keep specific, measurable, assignable, and time-related. Treat realistic as a check on resources and ownership — can this person, with these hours, run this shot — not as permission to pick a number that will not sting. Doran himself said the acronym does not mean every objective needs all five letters, and that action plans matter as much as the objective. Pair the sentence with an if–then for the first sitting. If the work is new, write a learning goal first. If the stall is endless comparing rather than a missing worksheet, you are on the analysis-paralysis page, not this one.
What should I read after this page?
Start with analysis paralysis, the Decisions parent this filter sits inside, if the stall is an unbound wish you keep rewriting. Read the 1-3-5 rule if you need a daily size budget to carry the shot. How to prioritise tasks and the ABCDE method cover ranking. Implementation intentions is the if–then research. Then the named review: Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule, the opposite case — average targets, average action. None of those replace writing one specific, dated, owned sentence tonight with a number that is allowed to be difficult. A realistic worksheet with no owner is still a wish.
Sources
- Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35–36.
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
- Wood, R. E., Mento, A. J., & Locke, E. A. (1987). Task complexity as a moderator of goal effects: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72(3), 416–425. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.72.3.416
- Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2005). Learning versus performance goals: When should each be used? Academy of Management Executive, 19(1), 124–131. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2005.15841964
- Schweitzer, M. E., Ordóñez, L., & Douma, B. (2004). Goal setting as a motivator of unethical behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 422–432. https://doi.org/10.5465/20159591
- Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6–16. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37008003
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
- Epton, T., Currie, S., & Armitage, C. J. (2017). Unique effects of setting goals on behavior change: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 85(12), 1182–1198. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000260
Related reading on The Growth Reads
The books this method draws on
- The 10X Rule summary & review — the named unused review; average, realistic targets produce average action
Related articles
- Analysis paralysis — the Decisions parent; the stall a filter is built to stop
- The 1-3-5 rule — the sister; a daily size budget to carry the shot
- How to prioritise tasks — the ranking judgement inside the week
- The ABCDE method — letters by consequence; still needs a number that is allowed to be hard
- Implementation intentions — the if–then that SMART does not write for you
- How to track productivity — whether the shot shipped, not whether the worksheet filled
- The Ivy Lee method — six ranked tasks, no height on the target
Go deeper
How this article was researched
The Growth Reads editorial team writes from primary sources: the books themselves, the authors’ published essays, and the peer-reviewed literature behind the claims. Every study cited above was read in the original publication or its published abstract, and every figure is quoted with its design and limit so you can judge its weight rather than take ours. Where a finding is a two-page 1981 practitioner essay, a narrative research synthesis, a laboratory experiment on cheating, or a motivational book rather than a randomised test of the SMART acronym, we say so in the body rather than in a footnote.
This page is a productivity method, not a book review of any single title, and not medical or clinical advice. Persistent inability to start work across contexts belongs with a clinician, not with a five-letter worksheet.
How we work: every article on The Growth Reads is built from the books in our library plus the research they rest on, and is reviewed and date-stamped when the evidence changes. Read our full methodology.