Smartest, Fastest, Best...

I avoided this book just because of the title - it's exhausting.

That is until you try to do something... something important to you.

Charles Duhigg's Smarter, Faster, Better is habit-based transformation wrapped around studies of (the) science of productivity. (That's a mouth full! But enough of the publisher's description.)

Here's a good example - learning how to manage to-do lists, SMART goals, and stretch goals can change our life.

To-do lists are great to break down larger, imagined stretch goals, but alone they easily become an end in themselves - mood repair tools. We write down easily accomplished (or already finished) tasks - check them off as done - and feel good about doing something... anything - even if it doesn't make any real difference in moving us from here to there.

And SMART goals are just more complicated cousins of to-do lists - because if we can really grasp all that's Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, then we're not stretching, creating or imagining better, we're just re-arranging what we know and doing more of it.

And stretch goals alone are overwhelming and frustrating - like saying "Build a rocket" or "Make more money" but without any engineering skills, jet propulsion knowledge, labor and return, or investing tactics to get us from here to what we can barely imagine.

SMART goals and to-do lists only serve as tools to realize stretch goals, and stretch goals without habits that make up SMART goals and to-do lists will destroy any hopes of something truly smarter, faster, better.

So in our personal and professional life we need both SMART and stretch goals, and if one is missing nothing much will really get done.

Do you have both?

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