It’s the beginning of the year, a time when many student may be wondering how to set goals in medical school. The New Year is the most popular time to make goals. Something about a fresh year drives you to want to do better, and accomplish things you’ve never done before.
However, many people’s goals are vague, or without actionable steps. This leads to unachieved goals and disappointment. But, there is a way to overcome this, and actually make goals that are attainable.
SMART goals is a tactic for goal setting that has been around for a while. It takes your wish and makes it into a plan. After creating your SMART goal, its up to you to do the things necessary to accomplish them. Continue reading to learn how to set goals in medical school by making SMART goals.
What are SMART Goals?
SMART goals are actually an acronym. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. SMART goals have been shown to increase achievement in academic success, weight loss, substance abuse, and many other facets where goal setting is imperative.
Goals help give your life direction. As a medical student, goals can make sure you stay on track to get accepted to residency, post-doc, whatever it is that you want to accomplish with this degree. Medical school is so long that you might find yourself flailing, and just trying to survive.
But, if you learn how to set goals in medical school, using the SMART method, you may find that things are a bit easier to achieve. Instead of focusing on the long-term goal of graduation, you can break up this goal into smaller chunks. Having smaller milestones, and achieving them, can boost your self-esteem, motivation, and provide you with a real-time assessment of your tactics. Are they working? Are they not? You can’t know unless you begin to strive towards various goals at smaller intervals than 4-years of medical school.
Breaking Your Goals Up
It’s important to understand that goal setting shouldn’t just include one long-term goal. That’s where you start. But, as I said earlier, long-term goals are hard to strive for because they are so far away. Therefore, you have to break them up into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Long-term Goals
Your long-term goals are the ultimate things that you want to achieve. So, think about what your end goal is. As a student thinking about how to set goals in medical school, your goals may be more academically focused. Graduating, matching into a residency, getting a job, etc., are all long-term goals. They are accomplishments that are far away, and take many intermediate steps to achieve.
Other goals may include fitness journeys, like running a marathon or losing weight. Some of your goals may be to achieve a certain financial status by the time you leave school. Decide what your goals are, and remember, you can have more than one!
Intermediate Goals
Intermediate goals are the steps you must achieve, to hit the end goal. Their time varies, with some being year-long, other semester-long, and even month-long. These goals may or may not be within your control. But, achieving them is required for you to hit your long-term goals.
So, for example, if your goal is to match into a residency, then look at what is required for that specialty. How many honors do you have to have? What about the number of work or research experiences? Attaining these various accolades will eventually help you with your long-term goal.
For other goals, like fitness goals, you may want to PR at certain distances. Perhaps you have certain weight benchmarks that will take a while to achieve, but are on target for your long-term goal. This is where you begin breaking down these steps, and working to achieve these shorter, less complex milestones.
Short-term Goals
Short-term goals are daily or weekly goals that are 100% attainable. So, when you are thinking about how to set goals in medical school, you need to do something that is 100% within your control. So much of medical school is outside of your control; grades, research acceptances, exam outcomes, etc. Setting short-term goals gives you accomplishments that you can check off every single day. And they should be tasks that lead up to accomplishment of your intermediate goal.
So, if your goal is to match, and your intermediate goals are to Honor in every class, then that means your short-term goals should be studying everyday for a certain amount of time, doing a certain number of practice questions, spending a certain amount of time in office hours. These are all things that are fully within your control, and theoretically should increase the odds of accomplishing your intermediate and long-term goals.
If you are trying to run a marathon, then these goals could be getting up and running at 6 am every day. Again, fully within your control. You don’t have to hit a certain time or distance. You just have to get up and go. The more you train, the longer/faster you should be able to run. As certain distances become easier, then you can push yourself to new goals.
If you want to lose weight, then you can set a goal of a certain number of minutes/days of working out. Again, you just have to go. No minimum reps, weight, or etc. It’s time-based, and your effort is what matters.
As you are building your breakdown of all these goals, it’s important to make each one of them SMART.
Specific
The first word, Specific, is important for learning how to set goals in medical school because you have to know exactly what it is you want to do. Saying “I want to match” is a general goal. But it’s not specific to you! It doesn’t say into what specialty. It doesn’t tell you which tier or type of residency. That goal doesn’t even say if you want to match during The Match, or during SOAP.
Although the end-goal of course is to match no matter how you get there, being specific in how you get there will add some drive and direction. Shoot for the moon, because even if you fall short, you’ll land among the stars. I go into every exam, aiming for 100%, because even if I’m short, I’ve put in the effort to at least pass. But, if I aim for 70% on an exam and miss, then I fail.
Don’t by shy about stating exactly what it is that you want, and working towards that goal.
Example of a specific goal: I want to match into Anesthesiology at a Tier I academic research program in the state of Texas during Match Week.
Measurable
The second letter stands for Measurable, and is also important for how to set goals in medical school. Making goals are measurable is vital for tracking your progress. If you don’t know where the end goal is, how do you know if you’re moving towards it, or away from it?
The easiest example for this is weight loss. Many people start the new year saying “I want to lose weight.”
That’s a great start to a goal. But how much weight? If there is no end goal, then what is the motivation to keep going past a few pounds? So, it’s vital that whatever you goal is, you set a parameter or measurement.
Example of a measurable goal: I want to lose 30 pounds.
Attainable
Attainability is very important, especially for learning how to set goals in medical school. Medical students have a tendency to be very ambitious. Which is fine, as long as the work matches the dream. Unfortunately, some times we set goals that just aren’t possible, for various reasons. Perhaps we just don’t put the time towards it. Maybe it just isn’t attainable for reasons outside of our control.
Regardless of the reason, goals need to be attainable or we set ourselves up for disappointment. Disappointment leads to giving up on our goals, and giving up on goal-setting in general. As you set goals, ask yourself are they even possible?
Saying “I want to solve cancer in my first year of medical school” probably is not going to happen. And if you put all your focus into that goal, you’re going to be disappointed when it doesn’t work out. You may have even missed out on other areas of your life towards which you could have been working.
Example of attainable goal is: I want to get honors or high pass in my Anatomy class. (Provided that you have the work ethic to make this happen.)
Realistic
Realistic is similar to attainable, in the sense that it is vital for learning how to set goals in medical school that don’t set you up for failure. Your goals need to be realistic for you and your situation. This is where goal-setting takes some introspection and honesty. There are plenty of people who set themselves up for failure because they chase something without building a proper foundation.
Prime example of this is wanting a certain score on an exam, but not studying for it. There’s a disconnect between the input and the output, and the outcome is going to be disappointment. It’s not realistic to cram everything in the night before the exam and score 100%. It’s not realistic to lose 30 pounds in 30 days, for most people. Make sure your goals are actually plausible, and something that you can do with the resources and skills that you have.
Example of realistic goal is: I want to run a half-marathon in six months.
Time-Bound
Goals must be Time-bound. When you’re a med student, you never feel like you have enough time. But, in order to learn how to set goals in medical school, all of your goals and activities have to have time connected to them. If you don’t have an end date, then you have no pressure or incentive to work towards your goals.
Whatever time you give yourself to complete a task needs to be realistic. If you try to cram certain activities in to tight time spaces, then you’re going to be disappointed. Think about how long it actually takes to do something, and place that time in your schedule. By making your goals time-bound, you induce a sense of urgency to get them completed. Saying “I want get published” is such a vague goal. By when do you want to get published? How long are you giving yourself to complete the research project? When you are getting drafts in place. All of these are time-bound questions that give you a deadline to reach for.
Example of a time-bound goal is: I want to be published by the end of my second year of medical school.
Example
Below is an example of how to break down a goal and make each of them SMART!
Main Takeaways
Goal setting in medical school is vital for getting where you want to go. It keeps you motivated, gives you something to work towards, and feels so damn good when you accomplish them. All it takes is a bit of organization, strategy, and a good plan that you can realistically follow. All of your goals won’t come true, and that’s just a part of life. But, the harder you work, and higher you reach, the more things that are going to come your way just by virtue of hard work.
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