15 Set A SMART Goal For Yourself As A Freelancer

Well, freelancers have basic two goals when they start their career, which include working with clients and next is to increase their income.

However, it’s not limited to that; in fact, freelancers need to plan their goals that go beyond the basics.

To be a successful freelancer, your vision should have much more than working with clients and making money.

And that’s why you need to understand the concept of SMART goals and how you can start your freelancing.

What do You need To Know About SMART Goals?

Before you start, it’s important that you need to know about SMART goals and how it’s helpful for freelancers.

Many freelancers have their general goals, but it includes SMART goals that lead to more success.

SMART goals are those which meet to these specific criteria :

Specific

Well, it’s obvious to get general about the goals, and it can be not clear how you can achieve the goal.

So the first thing that you need to be sure of is being specific and choosing the number

Measurable

Next to that, you want to be sure to keep the goal measurable. If you can’t measure your goal, this will not give you an easy way to reach them.

It gives you a goal that can be much simpler to achieve.

Attainable Or Achievable

Next is to make the goal much more attainable or achievable. So when you have goals in your mind, it makes you feel excited, but it will let you down as you don’t know how to get it done.

Goal setting is good, but it should be realistic for you. Sometimes goals can make you feel that it’s attainable, but if you dig deeper, they might not be that achievable.

So your goals should be easy to attain and have a way of doing it,

Relevant

Your goal should be relevant. Also you need to be laser-focused. So when you are creating the goals, don’t forget to miss the current situation and challenges you face.

Time-Bound

Last, it should be time-bound. Having goals is important, so is the deadline.

And when it’s self-imposed, you need to work on how long it will take. So you need to create the deadline as well as stick with it.

List Of SMART goal as a freelancer

It’s important to have goals so you know your business as freelancing grows. Also, you need to focus on expanding your knowledge, and for that here are some of the goals you can consider to start with :

Advancing Your Freelancing Skills

A Lot of people think that having skills like writing, editing, graphic, photography, or whichever you have is enough to be a freelancer.

But it’s not true, in order to be a successful freelancer and run a profitable business, you need other skills too such as business administration skills.

Here you need to communicate with your clients and hire the staff. For both, you need to excel in communication and hiring skills.

It’s not just limited here, you also need skills related to business, decisions, problem-solving, etc.

You need to advance your skills and this can be your SMART goal. You can consider courses online to add in skills, however, make sure you are being specified as well as having the timeline.

Improving The Work-Life Balance

It gets tough to juggle between work and family responsibilities, also when you have commitments from personal life and work at the same time, it gets hectic to balance.

Most freelancers end up neglecting one thing in order to focus on there.

When you don’t have the proper balance, this starts affecting your life and the people around you.

So it’s important to focus on your work-life balance, and you can set this as your SMART goal.

Growing Your Network

For freelancers, it’s important that you create the network as well as expand it for different reasons.

For starters, you never know where you are going to meet the people who can bring the opportunity for you as well as the business.

Secondly, your networking helps you in meeting like-minded people who focus on achieving your goals.

With this, you are more successful as you associate with successful people.

Networking can be difficult especially when you are working from home. But you can take a break from usual and visit the crowded spaces.

Improve The Time Management Skills

It’s challenging for the freelancers who are working from home, as most of the time you follow poor time management.

Most freeloaders also don’t hold the accountability of how their days are passing without noticing.

If the process goes on, it will affect both health and work. And that’s why it’s crucial to have time management skills. This can be your SMART goal.

Start Learning From People

It’s important to build a meaningful relationship regardless of which field you are working in.

Also narrowing it down to people who belong to your field makes it more sensible as you have something in common.

It can be challenging to look for people and similar opportunities, and that’s why it can be your SMART goals

Mingling with people who can help you in learning and getting experiences can be helpful.

Overcoming The Distractions

Distraction is one of the problems that freelancers mostly face especially when they are working from home.

Since you don’t work in a 9 to 5 work routine, you have your freedom over where you want to spend time so you can easily choose other work instead of your work.

If you have kids, pets, or family members, the noise and nagging can cause distraction.

You can make this as your SMART goal. Take the actions which can help you in avoiding the noises such as using noise-canceling headphones.

You can choose the space where you can work and keep people informed not to visit you during working hours.

Grow The Presence Online

Businesses need to have their presence online and physically both in the digital era.

Global exposure helps you in getting opportunities and connecting with people.

When you have a wider clientele, it gives you much more chances to increase your income.

Build The Healthy Habits

It’s important to aim for attaining a healthy self so you can aim for being more productive.

When you are working from home, it can make you feel lonely and it can determine how productive you are. Not just that, this ends up affecting mental health.

Besides this can affect physical fitness, so you need to focus on picking up healthy habits.

Set your time for your schedule, you can fix some of the time for going for a run or doing exercise.

Market The Freelancer Business

Growing the freelance business is a crucial part of your freelancing career and you need to make it your SMART goal.

It’s important that you are clear on the goals, set the budget, and focus on measuring the progress.

This can help you in expanding the business and improving the chances of meeting people who can boost the growth of your career.

This goal is also beneficial to make the freelancing career more profitable for you. Apart from this, you get more potential clients and people who are interested in your service.

Start Delegating Your Work

When you are running the business, you need to focus on delegating the work.

As it’s difficult to handle everything on your own, you can share the work with others.

If you work on everything on your own, this will end up hitting burnout. So you can keep it as a SMART goal.

Examples Of SMART Goals For Freelancing

Now, when you are a freelancer, you need to have goals related to how you want to shape your career.

To understand how you can set the goals, and here are some of the examples for you :

Writing Word Count For Your Website

Well, this can be your goal, for example, you are going to create a blog of 12,000 words for your freelance website in this quarter.

So if you are going to invest in the content market as a freelancer. You need to write the article and this will be for the quarter.

Well, here is how it fits to the SMART goal system :

Specific: You have the number of blog posts but the word count too. So it’s a specific goal that is specific.
Measurable: You have a measure of the goal of ending the quarter, and also have 12,000 words for the article.
Attainable: You have set the number of blog posts per quarter to one blog post for every week.
Relevant: To those who are investing in content marketing in order to promote the band, this is relevant as well.
Time-Bound: You have this goal to quarter and it’s time-bound.

Reaching Out To Marketing Companies

This can be your next goal, as you are going to reach out to 20 marketing companies to offer the services this month.

This is how your goal fits the SMART :

Specific: You might don’t have a specific list of companies but you have the number and type of companies as well as services.
Measurable: You are going for this month’s end and have pitched 20 companies.
Attainable: You have to pitch 5 months per week in order to pitch 20 companies.
Relevant: If you are niche, create the content for the marketing companies, so it’s the relevant goal.
Time-Bound: You set the time fixed within a month.