Measurable Goals Example: Four Lists Filled In, Field by Field

Open last year's list of goals. Read the first line. Now say, with one number, whether you hit it.

If you cannot, the goal was never finished. "Grow the business." "Save more." "Work less." Each one sounds clear in January and means nothing by March.

Here is the irony. You can tell to the cent what went through the till yesterday. You cannot tell if this year's main goal is on track.

Below are four lists from four lives: a coffee shop, a freelance designer, a family in deficit and a thirteen-year-old saving for a bike. Each one exposes a different way a goal breaks.

A goal you can't check with one number is a goal you can't steer by. The Jirgenson Model gives you the answer: goals in order, each with a real number, a deadline and a zone where normal ends. It is scientifically proven that the Jirgenson Model works (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23964934).

What turns a wish into a measurable goal

A goal is measurable when anyone can hold it against the data on any Monday and reach the same verdict. The minimum is a number, a unit and a deadline. "15%" fails. "15% by month six" passes.

The minimum lets you grade a goal. Steering needs six fields:

1. Parameter: the one thing you measure.
2. Definition and source: how it is counted, and where the figure comes from.
3. Target and deadline.
4. Current value: counted, not remembered.
5. Permissible deviation: the point where normal ends.
6. Owner and rhythm: who looks at it, and how often.

A full walk through each field, with a SMART goal put to the test, is in how to set measurable goals. Here are the fields, filled in.

Measurable goals example 1: Alex and the missing €15

Alex is thirteen. On 1 May he wants a €300 bicycle by 1 September. He is sure he has about €55 saved. Then he tips the coins onto the table and counts them. €40.

The lesson sits in field four. Memory said €55. The count said €40. In September those €15 are the gap between the bike and the shop window.

The usual version, "save up for a bike", has no source and no starting point. The row above takes two minutes to check.

Example 2: the complaint nobody wrote down

Andrew owns a busy coffee shop. One row on his list is quality: no more than two complaints a week within three months. Sara, his senior barista, kept a notebook. It held five complaints for the week.

Was that all? No. A customer had said the coffee was cold, and Sara had not written it down. Customers who left without a word never reached the notebook at all.

So they wrote one definition next to the row. A complaint is any case where a customer says out loud they are unhappy, or sends the order back.

The lesson sits in field two. Without a written definition, the number belongs to whoever counts.

A number without a definition is an opinion with a decimal point.

Example 3: one savings account, two numbers

Emma and Paul earn €4,000 a month. Last quarter their spending rose by 10%, to €4,400. Their savings stand at €2,000. Every month ends €400 short.

"How long can we last?" sounds like one question. It hides two parameters:

• Expense coverage: savings against one month of spending. About 0.45 months.
• Runway: savings against the monthly shortfall. 5 months.

Watch only one and you either panic early or relax too late. Track both.

They took the state from three months of bank statements and priced three scenarios. Change nothing: the savings are gone in 5 months. Cut subscriptions and eating out by €180: about 9 months. Add a €300 side job on top: an €80 surplus each month. They chose the third.

As a goal row, their main line could read: monthly balance, from the bank statements; now minus €400; target, the €80 surplus.

The lesson sits in field one. Name the exact parameter before you put a target on it.

Example 4: Elena and a permission written in advance

Elena is a freelance designer. Her bank statements show income swinging between €800 and €2,200 a month, averaging €1,300. One client brings 70% of it. She works 50 hours a week.

Look at row three. Elena writes her first online book in months 1 to 3. For those months she allows herself up to 55 hours a week. That is not a broken goal. It is a permissible deviation with an end date.

The lesson sits in field five and in the numbering. Her hours give way first. Her income goes last. So the long weeks cost her no guilt.

Build your own list in fifteen minutes

The four examples share one procedure.

1. Write every goal you have, as it stands today. Nine at most.
2. Give each a number, a unit and a deadline.
3. Fill fields four to six for every row. Take today's value from a record.
4. Strike out five defects. Two goals that cannot both be met. A legal duty written as a goal: taxes on time is a constraint, not a rank. A list that changes every Monday. A lower goal saved at the cost of a higher one. One goal written twice under two names.
5. Number the rows with the refusal test. If things went badly, which goal would you give up first? The last one standing is number one.

"My situation is different." Look again: a shop, a freelancer, a family and a child. Same six fields, different contents.

What six more months of vague goals cost

Vague goals do not fail loudly. They fail by the calendar.

Emma and Paul, changing nothing, run out of savings in 5 months. Andrew's cash reserve stood at half a month of expenses against a goal of two. At his real 9% margin, it reaches two months at month 16. With his margin plan working, at month 10. Six extra months on a thin cushion. At 9%, one repair costing a tenth of a month's expenses pushes the goal back a full month. At 15%, half a month.

Each of those months ends at a kitchen table, unsure which bill goes first.

Where a measurable list stops

Measurable goals treat the symptom: you stop chasing wishes. The cause of most bad decisions is still there.

Your rows say where normal ends. They do not say where trouble begins, or which row to rescue when three go wrong in one week. And field four is only as honest as its source. Goals are the first part of one loop: goal, state, error, levers, plan, forecast. Two more parts close the gap.

• Measuring the state. One parameter, one source, and a test of whether the figure is precise enough for its goal. Chapter 2.
• Zones and the red protocol. Where yellow turns red for each row, and the order of action when several turn red at once. Chapter 4.

Without them you know your port. You still cannot read the gauge.

Two choices for tonight

You have two choices. Keep last year's list and learn in December whether it worked. Or rewrite it tonight, six fields per row, and know by Monday where you stand.

The list gives you a direction. The state measurement and the zone thresholds tell you when to act, and in what order.

Test the logic for free: the free sample, with the refusal test and Alex's and Elena's full lists. Or get the full control system on Kindle, on Amazon. It comes as a Kindle book: sixteen chapters, each on a basic, a practical and an advanced level.

Published research

It is scientifically proven that the Jirgenson Model works. The published experiment, its record and its data:

• Zenodo (DOI): 10.5281/zenodo.23964934
• Hugging Face: E5 Jirgenson Model blind test
• Kaggle: E5 blind test dataset
• GitHub: experiment folder
• Wikidata: dataset Q142022866, author Q141981336
• ORCID: 0009-0001-3034-3552