SMART is probably the most widely known name in goal-setting methodology.
George T. Doran introduced it in a 1981 Management Review article, and the original A and R were actually Assignable and Realistic, not the Achievable and Relevant most people know today.
Set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound; those five criteria still hold up.
And yet, goals that perfectly satisfy every SMART criterion still quietly fizzle out a few weeks in, often enough.
That’s not because the framework is wrong. It’s because there’s a gap it doesn’t cover.
Limitation 1: it demands measurability the same way for everything
“Measurable” asks you to turn a goal into a number. That works fine for a goal that’s naturally numeric, like “grow quarterly revenue by 10%.”
The problem shows up with something like “build a reading habit.”
Force that into being measurable and it becomes “finish 4 books a month,” which puts all the focus on whether you finished a book, while the thing that actually mattered, opening a book a little bit every day, consistently, falls out of the metric entirely.
Some goals need to be watched as a running number to feel real. Some need to be measured by consistency.
Some just need a simple done-or-not. SMART doesn’t distinguish between these; it tries to force all of them into the same mold.
Limitation 2: it defines the goal, but not its connection to today’s action
Even a goal that checks every SMART box leaves one question unanswered: “So what do I actually do today?”
Specific, Measurable, and Time-bound help you define a goal well, but breaking that goal down into a concrete action for today is a separate job entirely.
A well-defined goal with no bridge to execution just sits in a document, disconnected from daily life.
Management researchers have made a similar point: the widely-cited 2009 paper “Goals Gone Wild” (Academy of Management Perspectives) argues that rigid goal-setting can narrow focus and erode intrinsic motivation.
It’s part of why OKRs, the framework Andy Grove created at Intel and John Doerr later brought to Google, treat roughly 70% completion as a good outcome instead of expecting 100%.
NOTE 100% completion is a fine target for personal goals
The OKR standard of “70% is a good outcome” was originally designed to coordinate ambition across multiple teams at a company level. For personal goal and habit tracking, there’s no need to import that stretch-goal philosophy wholesale.
What happens when a SMART-defined goal meets a tool
Even a goal that checks every SMART box needs some kind of tool to live in and get managed day to day. That’s exactly where the real trouble starts.
Type a goal like “grow quarterly revenue by 10%,” impeccably SMART on paper, into a Notion database, and there’s no feature that automatically calculates its progress for you.
You have to design your own rollup and formula properties, and restructuring subitems breaks that wiring, forcing you to fix it again.
Defining a goal well and automatically tracking its progress turn out to be two entirely separate skills.
We go into this exact wiring problem in Why Tracking Goals in Notion Falls Apart.
Do New Year’s resolutions need SMART too
A common New Year’s resolution like “exercise this year” fails to meet a single SMART criterion right out of the gate. It isn’t specific, measurable, or time-bound.
Refining that vague resolution into something SMART, like “30 minutes of cardio, three times a week,” is a genuinely meaningful first step.
But as covered above, that definition alone isn’t enough.
Without a next step connecting the defined goal to a concrete action today, no amount of SMART refinement stops the resolution from sliding back into a drawer.
We cover exactly how New Year’s resolutions collapse without structure at this same point in Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail, and How a System Fixes It.
What to add: measure each goal differently, connect it to today
None of this means throwing SMART out. It’s still a genuinely useful first step for defining a goal clearly. The gap shows up in the next step, and it needs two things.
First, measure each goal in whatever way actually fits it, as a running tally, a number, a matter of consistency, or a simple done-or-not, instead of forcing everything into the same shape.
Second, break that goal down into sub-goals and today’s tasks and habits, so that every completion automatically moves progress up.
Then “what do I do today” always has an answer, and you can always see which goal today’s work is actually feeding into.
Once SMART has helped you define a goal clearly, the next step is picking the measurement that actually fits it and connecting it all the way down to today’s action.
That next step is exactly what Retic is built for.