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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. New year's resolutions are a bit of a joke these days. Let's be honest. To the point that breaking them seems par for the course. Only 9-12% of the 41% of Americans who make resolutions in the first place follow through with them. As business owners, we face this every year too. We set goals for our team, or we have growth forecasts to hit. Right from the jump, we commit ourselves to deliver a long list of lofty promises. And do we come through? It would be very glib of me to accuse you of writing checks your…um…"bottom" can't cash. But statistically, that's precisely what you're doing. In the warm, cozy confines of the Christmas holidays and new year celebrations, you concoct all of these wonderful new milestones for you and your business. Then reality hits. The day-to-day operational issues, supplier delays and client requests. They all conspire to slow your progress ...

Photo : Duet PandG ( Shutterstock ) If you have big aspirations for 2023—a big deadlift, a marathon, a change in the size of your body—I sure hope you haven’t translated them into the limited, pass-fail box-checking of a SMART goal. But I do hope that you’ve made yourself some SMART goals to guide you through the process. Let me explain. Why SMART goals are different from Dream Goals SMART goals have long been heralded as a goal- setting life hack, but the truth is that they were invented for mangers to set quotas and such for their companies (the original “A” stood for “assignable,” as in, to an employee). A SMART goal, as it’s talked about it the fitness world today, is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Put together, this means you set a deadline by which time you expect to achieve a specific measurement of an outcome. In other words, you’ve turned it into a pass-fail test. And because you wouldn’t want to fail that pass-fail test, creating a proper...