• Tue. Nov 21st, 2023

Janeane's World: Published By James, Davis, and Associates

We train individuals and teams to work with confidence and competence. Call: 484 381 0532. Email: janeanedavis@janeanesworld.com.

Commit to Taking Action Now By Having SMART Plans

It is magnificent to commit to taking action now by having SMART  plans. People are always plotting and planning to move forward with one plan or another. It is interesting to witness the flurry of activity that goes into the making of plans. Then people get tired, don’t take action now and they don’t make their plans smart.

African American woman at a whiteboard with the words Commit to Taking Action Now By Having SMART Plans

If you want to succeed at any good and wonderful thing you must move from planning to taking action now with SMART plans. The idea behind the words, “take action now” is that a person is going to do something now. The crucial idea is that action takes place now. The planning, plotting, and dreaming stop. The action begins, things start getting crossed off the to-do list, and accomplishment begins to take place. One of the best things you can do with a plan is to TAN (Take Action Now).

Take action now with SMART plans!

Once you have made the commitment to take action now to action now to accomplish your goals, it is time to get SMART about accomplishing your plans. When plans or goals are SMART, they are:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-Bound

For the sake of illustration, let’s take the following common goal and make it SMART: I want to make more money. This is a common plan made by people every day of the week. It is also a plan that is often not accomplished because this plan is not smart as it stands now. When looking at it you cannot tell how much more money the planner wants to make. We have no way of knowing if any money made is more money. We don’t know if the person can make more money. We don’t know what type of time frame we are working with. Let’s work methodically, in a step-by-step manner to make this plan SMART.

Specific

When a plan is specific, it has sufficient information to make it clear to the reader what is that is planned. It is the specifics that help make sure action is moving forward in the right direction. Adding specific details to your plan makes it easier for you to start moving towards where you want to end the journey.

Use our example of wanting to make more money. More is not a specific word. Yes, it indicates an increase in amount, but what is the amount we are looking to make. Instead, let’s amend the goal as follows: I want to make an additional $500. Now we have something specific we can work with. Five hundred dollars is a specific, clear, and identifiable target.

Measurable
Graphs and charts and the words If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Plan SMART>

When a plan is measurable, there are indicators that permit one to gauge whether success has been reached. In our amended example: “I want to make an additional $500” is a clearly measurable marker. It is easy to look at the target and measure success and rate of completion along the way. It is possible for one to look their historical and current income and measure if five hundred additional dollars have been made.

Attainable

When a plan is attainable, it is one that can be achieved with hard work and determination. If a plan is attainable it can reasonably be accomplished. Attainability cannot always be determined in a vacuum. Sometimes we need to look at the other parts of the SMART plan to determine if a goal is attainable.

If we amend our sample goal to: “I want to make $500 using the ideas for affiliate marketing I read in a book that my friends used in order to earn $750”. The fact that the marketing tips that will be relied upon have been successfully used before with success indicates that the tips the person wants to put into place may work.

Realistic

When a plan is realistic, it is logical that it will come to pass. When a plan is realistic, it makes sense that it will come to pass. Realistic plans give you ideas and information sufficient to make it reasonable to believe the plan will come to pass. So, let’s amend our plan again: “I want to make an additional $500 by using the ideas for affiliate marketing in the book *** that my friends used  in order to earn $750 in one month, and I have already started using with moderate success.”

Time-Bound

When a plan is time-bound, there are clear and identifiable time barriers to starting and completing the plan. SMART plans do not have indefinite or undetermined start and end dates. So our plan would be amended as follows: “Within the next  three months I want to make an additional $500  by using the ideas for affiliate marketing I found in the book *** that my friends used in order to earn $750 in one month and I have already started using with moderate success.”


This amended plan is a way for a person to take action now using a SMART plan. By looking at it we know in a Specific way what the person wants to accomplish, earn an additional $500. Success is Measurable because one can look at historical data and determine if the additional income has been obtained, The plan is Attainable because there is a plan in a book that has been successfully used and the person has started using the plan with success. The plan is realistic because it makes sense that the plan can be achieved as laid out. Finally, the plan is Time-Bound because there is a clear tie period from the start to the end of the plan. This plan that the person is taking action now to complete is SMART.

In conclusion, it is magnificent to commit to taking action now by having smart plans. So, the question for you this magnificent day is, what SMART  planning are you bringing your actions today?

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