2020 Baking SMART Goals

I’ve been thinking a lot about my 2020 goals for the new year…personal, work, blog, finance, etc. In thinking about them, I wanted to have a systematic way to set up my goals for the new year.

Are you familiar with SMART goals? I first learned about this goal setting approach when I was working at a school in Brooklyn. As the supervisor, it was my responsibility to write goals for the therapists working directly with the students and these goals were written using the SMART format.

SMART is an acronym that stands for:

Specific
- What exactly do you want to achieve? Make your goals as specific as possible and list the details in a clear and concise way.
- Who needs to be involved to achieve the goal? Is this a group or individual goal?
- Is there a specific location that is relevant for your goal?
Measurable
- How are you going to know when your goal has been met?
- How will you track your goal progress?
- If this is a larger goal, are there specific milestones that need to be met before the end goal is achieved?
Achievable/Attainable
- Do you have the skills and resources needed to accomplish your goal? If not, what steps do you need to complete to acquire the skills and/or resources?
- What are the specific steps that need to be completed to achieve your goal?
Relevant
- Is this a worthwhile goal for you and does it actually work toward your long-term goals?
- Consider why reaching this goal is important to you and why you want to accomplish it.
Timely
- How long will it realistically take to accomplish the goal?
- When is the goal due date?
- If necessary, specify when you are going to work on the goal.
- Consider having multiple deadlines for each step specified in the “Achievable/Attainable” section.

In addition to using the SMART format to create goals that are more achievable, research has shown that writing goals down and sharing your goals with others makes it more likely for you to complete your goal.

In the hopes of maximizing the likelihood of reaching my goals, I have provided two of my 2020 baking goals. Please feel free to use these as a model for creating your own 2020 SMART goals.

I’ve also created a SMART Goal Worksheet that you can print and fill out for each goal as a way to organize the process.

Get the Worksheet Here!

To further increase the chances of achieving our 2020 goals, I would love to start a weekly accountability meeting for checking in on goal progress. If you are interested in joining me for this meeting, please send me an email at [email protected].

SMART Goal Examples

Goal #1: Posting more regularly on my blog.

Specific: I will publish at least one blog post weekly on my website for four consecutive weeks.
Measurable: Progress will be tracked on a spreadsheet with the dates of each week labeled. Each Sunday morning, I will record on the spreadsheet if I have reached the weekly goal.
Achievable/Attainable: On Sunday mornings, I will schedule time on my weekly calendar to ensure all blog post components can be completed within the week for timely posting. Since I am currently averaging 1-2 posts/month, this increase should be achievable.I have already set a repeating reminder in my phone for Sunday at 8am.
Relevant: This goal directly relates to writing a blog and should help motivate me to share more recipes and tutorials (i.e., the overall goal of my blog)
Timely: I will complete this goal by the end of February.

Goal #2: Increase variety of recipes I make/practice baking

Specific: At least once a month, I will make a recipe (and hopefully post it if the recipe tastes good) from one of the categories below.
- Categories:
  - Yeasted Bread
  - Muffins
  - Brownies
  - Ice cream
  - Fruit Pie
  - Pancakes
  - Swiss Roll Cake
  - Pastry with laminated dough
  - Fried Dough
  - Upside Down Fruit Cake
  - Linzer Cookies
  - Savory Pie/Hand Pie
Measurable: Progress will be tracked by using a checklist and checking off the recipes that are made on a monthly basis.
Achievable/Attainable: At the beginning of each month, I will choose at least one recipe to make from this list and schedule time to make the recipe in my monthly calendar.
Relevant: This goal will help increase my baking skills and variety of recipes that I know how to make.
Timely: This will be a year-long goal (or sooner if I make everything on this list before the end of the year). In other words, my long-term goal due date is 12/31/20 and my monthly due dates will be the last day of each month.

What goals do you want to achieve next year? If you are struggling to make them more specific, feel free to email me and I can help. I have a lot of experience writing and tracking goals as a therapist (i.e., my day job), so I would love to be able to help in any way that I can!