"Reject SMART goals; make them challenging instead Chris Bailey expected SMART goals to be validated by research and was surprised to find the opposite when he searched Google Scholar: "Realistic goals often aren't good enough — we're limiting our potential when we make a goal merely realistic." The SMART framework originated not in an academic journal but in a single management magazine article, and it spread virally the way the 10,000-step rule did — because it sounds plausible, not because it has strong evidence. Bailey now argues that deliberately challenging goals produce more achievement than ones calibrated to be comfortably attainable, and that the redundancy within the SMART criteria (specific and measurable often mean the same thing) wastes cognitive effort that could go elsewhere. Source: Chris Bailey, Modern Wisdom, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start"