Without a plan, a goal remains just an intention

This post shares an interesting discovery that I made while unpacking the impact of one of my goals for 2026.
 
I decided that one of my goals for 2026 is to complete the 1400km expedition challenge on my Garmin app.
 
Despite knowing that I walked a total of 800kms in 2025, I felt that walking 1400km in 2026 is well achievable and realistic. It’s only 600 more than I did in 2025, right? I patted myself on the back for creating a SMART goal.
 
Articulating my 2026 SMART goal
 
See my checking and thinking in the table below:

Now that I have my end state, the next step is to plan out milestone by milestone from today until 31 December what I will need to do.
 
Planning how to achieve my goal:
 
I decided that I will walk every day except for a Friday and one of the days over a weekend because it is good to factor in rest days. This means my plan is to walk on 5 days of the week – doing this for 52 weeks means I will walk on 260 days for the whole year. I am still feeling very satisfied with my goal and attempt to keep healthy and fit in 2026.
 
Given that my total goal is 1400kms, it means that I need to complete just over 5kms every day on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday or Sunday. A total of 25kms in a week.
 
Hmmm, ok! I need to put aside an hour on each of those days as this is how long it takes me to walk the distance.
 
Hmmm, alright! This works perfectly for me now while I am still on leave but I am starting to be unsure about how practical and realistic this is when I get back to the office again and my normal routine is back in place. In 2025, I generally (in a good week) fitted in a 3km walk twice during the week and a total of around 10-12kms over the weekend giving me a total of 18kms per week. Hmmm, again – a difference of 7kms compared to my goal total.
 
What I don’t want, is to set myself up for failure or constantly feel that I am having to make up the kilometers that I potentially am not getting to.
 
At this point, I am appreciating the outcome of my planning exercise: although I created a SMART goal, the planning has shown that it could become more than I can realistically expect to achieve.
 
I want to review my goal – I do want to do more than 2025 and therefore decide to still aim for the 1400kms but rather extend my end date. I decide to target 4kms on a Tuesday and Thursday and 15kms total over a weekend. This gives me a total of 1196kms for the year – a gap of 204 kms. I therefore extend my end date to 1 March 2027 to realistically allow myself to achieve the goal while still targeting more walking distance than in 2026.
 
The point is - a goal update is quite acceptable during planning
 
Now, I have a proper SMART goal. My point is that the exercise to plan out how to achieve my goal actually pointed out that my answer to the “R” – is it realistic – was not correct. And that’s ok because the goal and the plan go hand in hand – I am much happier with my goal now that I have amended it and know for sure that it is stretching but also achievable and realistic.
 
What I don’t want to do, is to change the goal or the plan once I start.  But now that I know my goal and my plan is realistic and achievable, I am excited to start!