SMART goals

About this tool

SMART goal builder: what it is and how to use it

A SMART goal is a goal written clearly enough that you could tell, on a set date, whether you did it; the acronym is usually traced to a 1981 article by George T. Doran. This builder asks five short questions, turns your answers into one sentence and lets you add an if-then plan. It is free, runs in your browser and keeps your saved goals on your own device.

What SMART stands for, and where it comes from

The acronym is usually traced to George T. Doran, the president of a management consultancy, writing in Management Review in November 1981. His letters stood for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-related. A University of Florida guide notes that the wording of SMART goals "has evolved over time", so you may meet other words for some of the letters.

Doran did not treat it as a rule for every goal. He wrote that the acronym "doesn't mean that every objective written will have all five criteria", which is why only the first box here is required.

On the first letter, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found that specific, difficult goals consistently led to higher performance than urging people to do their best. The optional if-then line comes from Peter Gollwitzer, who described these plans in 1999; a 2024 update of 642 tests found them effective, and after allowing for publication bias the authors call the effect robust but small. More in Goal-setting methods worth knowing.

How to use it

1. Start with the first box: what exactly will you do? It is the only one you have to fill in.
2. Add the others where they fit: how you, or a friend, will know it is done; who will do it; why it is within reach; and by when.
3. Watch the sentence under Your goal take shape as you type. The letters below it show which parts are filled in.
4. If you like, open Add an if-then plan and write a situation you expect and what you will do when it comes.
5. Press Save goal to keep it here, or Copy goal to paste it elsewhere. The questions and the sentence pattern are our suggestion, not Doran's.

An example

"Learn Spanish" is hard to check. Through the builder it might become: do three twenty-minute Spanish lessons a week, ticked on a calendar, until the end of March, because they fit into a lunch break. The if-then line: if I sit down with lunch on a weekday, then I open the lesson.