Continuing with my quest in the search (and the definition) of the ultimate life-management webapp I have revisited an old concept which I used to apply in my life but sadly have forgotten (continuity – another of the issues that I want to address and solve with my service). I have since then reinstated this practice in my life again.
I am talking about the S.M.A.R.T criteria. This mnemonic is used in project management at the stage where one sets the objectives of a project.
S.M.A.R.T is typically defined as such:
| Letter | Major Term | Minor Terms |
|---|---|---|
| S | Specific | Significant,[3] Stretching, Simple |
| M | Measurable | Meaningful,[3] Motivational,[3] Manageable |
| A | Attainable[4] | Appropriate, Achievable, Agreed,[5][6] Assignable,[7] Actionable,[8] Action-oriented,[3] Ambitious[9] |
| R | Relevant | Realistic,[7] Results/Results-focused/Results-oriented,[4] Resourced,[10] Rewarding[3] |
| T | Time-bound | Time-oriented, Time framed, Timed, Time-based, Timeboxed, Timely,[4][6] Time-Specific, Timetabled, Time limited, Trackable, Tangible |
Source: Wikipedia
It is not perfect but it sure as hell works well. S.M.A.R.T goals converts fuzzy ideas that are difficult to act upon into something actionable and manageable. I have followed this criteria for about 3 weeks now and it works. It helps me focus and it gives me direction which I think is the most important aspect of it.
Measured life – taking a data driven approach to life
What mostly intrigues me is the M = Measure. I am fast becoming a firm believer in what Peter Drucker is famously believed to have said:
You can only manage what you can measure.
It would be interesting to see a webapp that used data to try to evaluate and predict the success of initiatives in order to develop life-strategies. By taking a data-driven approach to how we manage our lives it might be that we can act faster upon the goals and objectives that are important to us. Having access to a rich data-set could help compare and contrast and in this way assist a user in his pursuit of a goal.
Interestingly enough this is where my thoughts have headed the last weeks. I asked myself; How can a system harness the success of other users in order to calibrate and optimize goal “roadmaps”? (I see several ways how this could work but for all the same rule seems to apply – the degree of success gets higher with a greater amount of data available.)
It would be damn near impossible to adher to a strictly data-driven life but I am quite convinced that a quantitative analysis is an important foundation when defining goals and related milestones. Just look at Google. They tried out 41 shades of blue on their links in order to see which performed best.
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A few days ago while at a Christmas party I had an interesting conversation with a fellow IT professional. It turned out that both of us had been investigating and tried out different productivity and life strategy systems for quite a while and had come to more or less the same conclusions. One of the things we discussed was the idea of using roadmaps for achieving goals.
It was while discussing roadmaps that the conversation lead into talking about intention and the fact that the achievement of complex goals does not follow straight roadmaps. They could, but the road to the completion of a goal is not always an easily predictable one. The declaration and communication of the intent is probably the most important step in successfull goal completion. By communicating intent we discover and invite commentary and advice from external sources which we otherwise probably would not have considered.
The last few weeks I have put a lot of thought into how roadmaps might be defined (I am working on a service where individuals can specify, measure and attain goals in a relevant and time-bound manner, S.M.A.R.T). I struggled with having to define rigid roadmaps (one size fits all) but I am now quite sure that intent has to play a significant role and that these roadmaps should probabley be generated on the basis of how other people have succesfully achieved goals.
I have noticed forays into this already, plancast.com comes to mind. They define themselves as:
A service for sharing your upcoming plans with friends. It’s a social calendar of sorts
On plancast.com you submit your future plans and your friends will be able to hear about them and even join them which I guess will make for a more defined or contextualized experience. (Having like-minded indivduals around you should enhance the experience.)
Another person who has noticed this is Jeremy Owyang, he even named it The Intention Web (or anticipation web, forward-thinking web). Owyang argues that:
With event planning features, like Facebook events, upcoming.org, we’re starting to see people make explicity public remarks on what they want to do, when, and with who.
I think this is exciting and it doesn´t take much imagination to see that the possibilites are big here.
What do you think?
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