SMARTEER Goals
Dimension: Direction · Type: Stage
SMART goals plus three additions that make them human enough to follow through on: Enjoyable, Evaluate, Reward.
Introduced by Shihui Xu (UNDP) at the Make Career Moves with the 5i Framework session of the UN Inter-Agency Career Week 2026, on 7 May 2026. Shihui presented SMARTEER as the second dimension (Intentional) of the 5i Framework, with the explicit argument that SMART goals fail because they are not human enough.
The framework
SMARTEER extends SMART with three additions: Enjoyable, Evaluate, Reward. The argument behind the extension: SMART goals fail not because they are poorly designed, but because they treat goals as project management. Goals you enjoy and share with others are the ones you keep.
When to use it
- When setting career or development goals that need to last beyond the first burst of motivation.
- When previous SMART goals you have set have technically been “well-formed” and yet have failed to produce the change.
- As the Intentional dimension of the 5i Framework.
- For personal goals that compete with daily work pressure (a learning track, a fitness routine, a side project).
What you need
- One specific goal you want to commit to.
- 30 minutes for the first formulation.
- Honest reflection on what would actually energise you, not what should in theory.
The seven elements
SMART, then plus three.
S. Specific
Concrete enough that anyone reading the goal could tell what it means. Not “improve my career” but “transition into a programme management role in food security within 12 months”.
M. Measurable
How will you know you got there. A milestone, a deliverable, a number, a date. Even qualitative goals can have measurable signals.
A. Achievable
Within reach given your starting point and constraints. Not impossibly easy, not impossibly hard. The Goldilocks zone is where commitment compounds.
R. Relevant
Connected to your values and your direction. A SMART goal that is not relevant is a perfectly-formulated distraction.
T. Time-bound
A deadline. Not “soon”, not “this year”. A specific endpoint, even if it is six months away.
E. Enjoyable (the first addition)
Will the process energise you, not just the outcome?
This is the load-bearing addition. A goal whose pursuit drains you will not survive the first hard week. A goal whose pursuit gives you energy compounds.
The test: imagine the work itself, not the milestone. The hours you will spend doing the thing, not the moment of finishing. If the imagined hours are ones you would willingly take, the goal is enjoyable. If they are ones you would only endure for the prize, the goal is at risk.
E. Evaluate (the second addition)
Build checkpoints into the goal itself. Stop at predefined moments and ask: what is working, what needs adjusting?
The check is not just “am I on track?“. It is “is this still the right goal, given what I have learned in the last month?“. Goals that are never evaluated drift into stale commitments.
A reasonable cadence: monthly for short-term goals (under six months), quarterly for longer-arc ones.
R. Reward (the third addition)
Plan specific milestones you will celebrate, however small.
The reward closes the habit loop for goal pursuit; without one, the brain learns the work is its own punishment. With one, the brain associates progress with positive feeling, and the next stretch becomes easier.
The reward does not have to be expensive or elaborate. The speaker’s example: when running a half-marathon, she thinks about the beer afterward, the bread with butter and cheese, the finisher medal. Small, sensory, planned in advance.
Steps
- Draft the SMART skeleton first. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. One paragraph.
- Test the Enjoyable element. Imagine the work itself, in detail. Is this energy you want to spend? If the answer is no, the goal is not yours yet; revise or replace.
- Define the Evaluate cadence. Specific dates on the calendar. “On 15 February and 15 May, I will pause for 30 minutes and answer: what is working, what needs adjusting, do I still want this?”
- Plan the Reward milestones. Specific, sensory, planned in advance. Mark them in the calendar.
- Share the goal. Tell someone (a manager, a mentor, a friend, a family member) the full goal, including the SMARTEER elements. Sharing creates external accountability and lowers the cost of follow-through.
- Re-read at each Evaluate checkpoint. Adjust if necessary. Drift is normal; unmonitored drift is the failure mode.
Worked example
A People Development Analyst sets a SMARTEER goal.
- Specific. Build an AI assistant to help colleagues at her agency navigate internal learning resources.
- Measurable. The assistant goes live for at least 50 colleagues with a satisfaction rating of 4/5 or higher.
- Achievable. She has the technical skills and the institutional access; the build is plausible in three months.
- Relevant. Connects to her core value of helping others; aligns with her People Development mandate.
- Time-bound. Three months from start.
- Enjoyable. She loves learning by doing. Building the assistant is itself the kind of work she would do for free. The hours feel like investment, not extraction.
- Evaluate. Monthly checkpoints: month one (basic prototype tested with three colleagues), month two (broader pilot with ten colleagues), month three (full launch with feedback).
- Reward. Each milestone marked with a deliberate weekend off and a specific celebration: the prototype with a nice dinner, the pilot with a museum afternoon, the launch with a longer break.
She tells her supervisor about the goal at her quarterly review and asks her supervisor to ask her about progress at each checkpoint. The goal becomes real partly because it is shared.
Pitfalls
- Skipping the Enjoyable test because the outcome looks valuable. Goals selected only for outcome (looks impressive, will help my CV, will please my manager) often die in the middle when the work itself stops feeling worth it. Test the work, not just the prize.
- Setting Evaluate dates and ignoring them. A checkpoint that does not produce a deliberate pause is decoration. Block the time on the calendar like any other meeting.
- Treating Reward as silly. The brain rewires through felt reward, not through stoicism. Skipping the Reward element is not virtue; it is sabotage of the loop.
- Setting a SMARTEER goal alone. The Share step is what makes the goal external. Goals that live only in your head fade.
- Over-specifying the goal. A goal that is too rigid cannot absorb the learning that the Evaluate step produces. Leave room for the goal to evolve as you do.
- Setting too many SMARTEER goals at once. One or two real goals beat five aspirational ones. The framework’s value is concentration, not breadth.
- Confusing SMARTEER with SMART-Method (the interview structure). SMART Method is the competency-interview answer structure (Situation, Mission, Action, Result, Teachability). SMARTEER is the goal-setting structure. Different things; same acronym family. Watch the context.
When not to use it
When the change you want is at the habit level rather than the goal level. Habits run on the habit loop and benefit from a tiny-habits setup. Goals are larger arc commitments; habits are the daily structure that supports them.
When the goal is genuinely imposed (a manager’s deliverable, an organisational target). SMARTEER works best for goals you own. For imposed targets, the framework can still help you find the part you can make your own, but the energy will not compound the same way.
How I use it
Personal note pending. Davide to fill.
Related frameworks
- 5i Framework, the umbrella framework where SMARTEER sits as the Intentional dimension.
- Silent Coaching for Goals, the protocol that converts a SMARTEER goal into a committed first action.
- Skill Matrix Audit, the operational artefact that surfaces specific development goals worth formalising as SMARTEER.
- Career Mapping, the upstream gap analysis that often produces the goals SMARTEER then formalises.
Notes compiled by Davide Piga. Last updated 2026-05-09.