Be SMART

Nicholas Bennett-Brush is a final-year PharmD candidate at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Pharmacy at MU. Following graduation, he will serve as a 2024–2025 Education Fellow at APhA headquarters in Washington, DC.

A typical day in pharmacy school is daunting. Hours of lectures, meetings, internships, assignments, and study sessions fill every day. So how do we do it? What tool can we use to break down these tasks into manageable chunks?

Goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals) are something we have all been taught to use as a framework for developing a patient care plan or a plan of action. What happens if we apply it to our day-to-day tasks? As a final-year PharmD candidate preparing to graduate and move into the “real world,” I realized that this tool for managing care plans could be revolutionary for my career and my well-being.

Time-management tool

Pharmacists love evidence-based medicine. In turn, I love evidence-based strategies for time management and achievement. So where do SMART goals come from? What science lies behind the method?

In 1968, Edwin A. Locke published “Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives,” which established that setting specific and challenging goals improves performance.¹ In 1990, Locke and Gary P. Latham published A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance, in which they elucidated five principles for effective goal setting²:

1. Clarity.
2. Challenge.
3. Commitment.
4. Feedback.
5. Task Complexity.

These five principles inform SMART goals.

I know what you’re thinking. How does spending time building SMART goals reduce the time you spend achieving those goals? I thought so, too.

Let’s look at an example goal with which we should all be familiar: read Goodman and Gilman’s “Chemotherapy of Infectious Disease” chapter and build a study guide for an exam in 2 weeks. Is this goal SMART? Yes, you must effectively plan to read and summarize two subsections per night (seven nights total), edit your study guide for clarity and efficiency (two nights), and then study that material (five nights). This is SMART.

Personal and professional results

Some of my personal goals for this year are to read one book per month and hike in three different states. Some professional goals are to pass the NAPLEX 2 months after graduation and attend two national and local conferences. Are these goals SMART? Mostly. All are time-bound, measurable, attainable, and relevant. With respect to “time-bound,” these are nonspecific goals, as many are multistep and require careful planning and time management.

What are the benefits of this for students outside of academic success? Over the past year, I have found more free time to pursue my interests outside of school and work. I also found that by building short-term SMART goals, I was able to talk about my long- and short-term aspirations with confidence and clarity during residency interviews, which I believe demonstrated my work ethic and thought processes to the selection committees.

The challenge

I challenge you (and myself!) to build SMART goals on the scale of days to weeks so that you can effectively manage your multiyear career aspirations.

The future doesn’t start tomorrow. It starts today. Be SMART!

References

1. Locke EA. Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organ Behav Hum Perform. 1968;3(2):157–189.
2. Locke EA, Latham GP. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice Hall; 1990.