Projects: Why SMART Goals Work Better for Everyone When They Become Neuroinclusive

A neuroinclusive upgrade for clearer goals, lower friction, and more sustainable project work.

SMART goals are one of the most widely used tools in project management, coaching, leadership development, education, therapy, and organizational planning. Their appeal is obvious. They promise to turn vague intentions into clearer commitments. Instead of saying “I want to be more organized,” SMART asks us to define what exactly will happen, how progress will be measured, whether the goal is realistic, why it matters, and by when it should be done.

In many contexts, that helps.

But SMART also assumes a lot.

It assumes that clarity is accessible, feedback is neutral, capacity can be estimated reliably, relevance can be separated from expectation, and time can be used as a stable organizing structure.

From a neuroinclusive leadership perspective, this is not only a formulation problem. Robuste (2026) frames neuroinclusion as a shift from individual accommodation toward cognitive inclusion by design: workflows, boundaries, and environments must support regulation, rhythm, and long-term sustainability.

For many neurodivergent people, the assumptions behind SMART do not consistently hold.

Not because they lack motivation, discipline, intelligence, or commitment, but because goal-setting draws on the same systems that are often under load: sensory and emotional processing, cognitive and temporal regulation, motor and energy rhythms, social and communication styles, and executive function and systems thinking.

This does not mean SMART is wrong.

It means SMART is incomplete when it is used without checking state, access, neurodivergent load, and the design conditions required for implementation.

A neuroinclusive SMART upgrade is not only useful for neurodivergent people. It also helps neurotypical project leaders build goals that create less friction, reduce unnecessary pressure, conserve energy, and support more sustainable execution across the whole team.

SMART defines the goal.Neurodivergence shows where the load is.

Design makes it workable.

A neuroinclusive upgrade does not make goals less ambitious. It makes them more accurately designed.

What SMART Goals Were Designed to Do

SMART is a goal-setting framework commonly used to make goals clearer and easier to evaluate. The original version is usually traced back to George T. Doran’s 1981 article on writing management goals and objectives. Over time, the wording has shifted across contexts, but the most common contemporary interpretation is:

S

Specific means the goal is clearly defined. It should describe what is to be done rather than remain broad or vague.

M

Measurable means there is a way to track progress or determine whether the goal has been achieved.

A

Achievable means the goal should be realistically attainable.

R

Relevant means the goal should matter and fit the person’s wider purpose, role, values, project, or organizational priorities.

T

Time-bound means the goal should have a deadline, timeframe, or defined completion point.

The strength of SMART is operational clarity. It asks people to move from intention to formulation. It reduces vagueness. It can make progress easier to see. It can help teams coordinate and individuals commit.

Goal-setting theory also supports the broader idea that goals can improve performance when they are clear, appropriately challenging, supported by feedback, and matched to ability and task complexity (Locke & Latham, 2002).

That last part matters.

Goals do not work simply because they are well worded. They work when the person has the capacity, context, feedback, resources, and strategy required to act on them.

This is where SMART often becomes too thin for neurodivergent implementation.

A goal can be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound on paper, while still being inaccessible in practice.

The Missing Layer: State, Access, and Neurodivergent Load

SMART is often presented as if the main problem with goals is poor formulation. If the goal is not working, make it more specific. Make it measurable. Add a deadline. Clarify the relevance. Break it down.

Those adjustments can help, but they do not answer the deeper implementation question:

Can the person actually access the functions this goal requires?

This is where a neuroinclusive approach needs to add a missing layer between goal-setting and action.

That layer includes three checks:

State Check

What state is the nervous system in right now?

Access Check

Which functions are currently available?

Load Check

Which neurodivergent domains does this goal load?

These three checks are related, but they are not the same.

State refers to the person’s current nervous-system condition. A person in shutdown, overload, panic, shame, threat, exhaustion, or sensory overwhelm may not have immediate access to planning, language, choice, perspective, emotional regulation, or initiation. In that state, asking for a clearer goal may increase pressure rather than create movement.

Access refers to functional availability. A person can look calm and still have limited access to sequencing, time estimation, self-trust, decision-making, language, prioritization, or task initiation. Access is not always visible from the outside.

Neurodivergent load refers to the profile-level demands created by the goal itself. This is the crucial point: regulation does not erase neurodivergent traits. A person may be regulated and still need visible time anchors. They may be calm and still find task switching costly. They may be emotionally grounded and still require sensory predictability, asynchronous communication, or external scaffolding for executive function.

The goal is therefore not only to regulate first. It is to distinguish between state-based access problems and trait-based design needs.

A state problem might be:

“I am too dysregulated to plan right now.”

A trait-based design need might be:

“I need visible time architecture even when I am regulated, because abstract deadlines are not enough.”

This distinction prevents a common mistake in coaching, leadership, therapy, and education: assuming that once someone is regulated, the neurodivergent barriers disappear.

They do not.

Regulation restores access. It does not erase the profile.

Neuroinclusion is not a softer standard. It is a more accurate design standard: one that asks what people need in order to access the work, not only what the work demands from them. — Alexandra Robuste, based on Gentle Leading & Neurodivergence-Inclusive Leadership (Routledge, 2025)

SMART × SNIP™

SMART criterion	Hidden assumption	Neurodivergent friction	Neuroinclusive upgrade
Specific	Clarity is easily accessible.	The task expands into too many hidden steps, or the starting point is not visible.	Bounded & startable
Measurable	Feedback is neutral.	Tracking can become shame-based, all-or-nothing, or another executive-function task.	Shame-safe & process-aware
Achievable	Capacity is stable and predictable.	Energy, sensory load, transitions, recovery needs, and social demands are underestimated.	Capacity-matched & recovery-aware
Relevant	The person can easily separate true fit from external expectation.	Masking goals, “should” goals, or approval-based goals can look relevant but create long-term cost.	Fit-based & self-trust-informed
Time-bound	Time is a neutral and reliable organizing structure.	Deadlines may not create usable time architecture; time blindness, transition friction, and restart difficulty remain.	Anchored, buffered & restartable

The SNIP™ Lens: Where Goals Create Load

A neuroinclusive upgrade to SMART becomes more precise when goals are analyzed through neurodivergent load domains.

In the SNIP™ framework, five domains help locate where the load may be showing up:

Sensory & Emotional Processing

This includes sensory input, emotional intensity, overload, recovery, threat response, shame, frustration, and the body’s ability to stay within a workable range. Research on autistic adults’ sensory experiences shows that sensory demands are not peripheral comfort issues; they shape access, participation, recovery, and daily functioning (MacLennan et al., 2022, 2024).

Cognitive & Temporal Regulation

This includes attention, time perception, sequencing, task-switching, working rhythm, mental clarity, and the ability to organize information across time. Time perception is particularly important for ADHD, where research has repeatedly linked ADHD with differences in time estimation, time reproduction, duration processing, and temporal self-regulation (Barkley, 1997; Mette, 2023; Ptacek et al., 2019).

Motor & Energy Rhythms

This includes activation, fatigue, movement needs, recovery rhythms, energy fluctuation, initiation energy, and the body’s pacing capacity. In project settings, this matters because “achievable” is not only a question of objective difficulty. It is also a question of energy, activation, transitions, recovery, and cumulative load.

Social & Communication Styles

This includes directness, reciprocity, processing style, feedback, visibility, social ambiguity, masking, relational load, and communication format. Research on autistic camouflaging shows that adapting to social expectations can carry substantial psychological costs and can affect mental health and self-perception (Bradley et al., 2021; Perry et al., 2022). More recent work also suggests that camouflaging is not exclusive to autism and may be relevant for adults with ADHD as well (van der Putten et al., 2024).

Executive Function & Systems Thinking

This includes planning, prioritization, initiation, working memory, organization, decision-making, system complexity, and the ability to move from intention to implementation. Real-world executive function difficulties have been documented in autistic adults and are associated with adaptive functioning, anxiety, and depression (Wallace et al., 2016). ADHD research also strongly connects ADHD with self-regulation and executive function challenges (Barkley, 2012, 2015).

SMART goals activate all of these domains in different ways.

This does not mean SMART is useless. It means SMART is under-specified for neurodivergent implementation.

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Specific: The Problem of Apparent Clarity

In SMART, a goal should be specific. It should describe what exactly needs to happen.

This sounds simple. In practice, “specific” requires a surprising amount of cognitive and executive access. The person has to identify the relevant task, separate it from adjacent tasks, define the scope, understand the context, and know where the work starts.

For neurodivergent people, this often loads Cognitive & Temporal Regulation and Executive Function & Systems Thinking. Both domains are deeply involved in sorting, sequencing, prioritizing, and turning a broad project into a startable action. This matters because executive function is not simply about “willpower”; it involves the systems required to organize behavior over time and toward future goals (Barkley, 2012).

A goal such as “update the website” may look specific enough in a workplace or coaching conversation. But internally, it may contain dozens of nested tasks: copy, layout, SEO, images, links, booking flow, mobile view, accessibility, legal pages, calls to action, design consistency, and publishing decisions.

The goal is not one task. It is a system.

Specific can fail in two directions.

Sometimes the goal remains too vague, because the project appears as a foggy whole and no start point is visible.

At other times, the goal becomes too detailed. A neurodivergent person may compensate for uncertainty by over-defining every possible subtask. The result is not clarity, but paralysis.

The neuroinclusive upgrade is not just to make the goal more specific. It is to make it bounded and startable.

The question becomes:

Where does this goal start, and what is explicitly not part of this step?

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will update my website by Friday.”

A neuroinclusive version would be:

“I will update only the booking page headline and call-to-action today. I will not change layout, SEO, images, or other pages in the same session.”

That goal is not only clearer. It is contained. It reduces task expansion. It protects against rabbit holes. It gives the nervous system a visible entry point.

Upgrade: Specific becomes bounded and startable.

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Measurable: The Problem of Shame-Based Tracking

In SMART, progress should be measurable. A person should be able to tell whether they are moving forward or whether the goal has been achieved.

Measurement can be useful. It can create visibility and feedback. It can help people notice progress that would otherwise remain invisible. Goal-setting theory itself treats feedback as an important part of effective goal pursuit (Locke & Latham, 2002).

But measurement is not always neutral.

For many neurodivergent people, tracking can quickly become evaluation. Evaluation can become shame. Shame can become avoidance. Avoidance can become evidence of failure.

This loads Sensory & Emotional Processing, especially where there is a history of criticism, rejection, correction, school failure, workplace performance pressure, or internalized “I never follow through.” It can also load Executive Function & Systems Thinking, because tracking itself becomes another task to maintain.

The camouflaging literature is relevant here because it shows how strongly neurodivergent people may adapt to external expectations and evaluation pressures, often at a cost to wellbeing (Bradley et al., 2021; Perry et al., 2022). In that context, measurement systems are not emotionally neutral by default. They can become another site of self-monitoring and performance pressure.

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will write 1,000 words every day.”

On paper, that is measurable. In practice, it may create an all-or-nothing structure. If the person misses one day, the tracking system may no longer feel like information.

It may feel like accusation.

The problem is not measurement itself. The problem is the wrong kind of measurement.

Many neurodivergent goals need shame-safe metrics. Instead of measuring only perfect output, the system can measure contact, continuity, recovery, restart, or movement through a workflow.

A neuroinclusive version might be:

“I will track contact with the writing process: opened the document, added notes, drafted text, edited one section, or published. Any contact counts as maintained momentum.”

This still creates measurable progress, but the measurement no longer depends on perfection. It protects the relationship with the goal.

The deeper question becomes:

Can this measurement give information without becoming self-attack?

Upgrade: Measurable becomes shame-safe and process-aware.

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Achievable: The Problem of Theoretical Realism

In SMART, a goal should be achievable. It should be realistic rather than impossible or wildly overambitious.

This is one of the most important criteria, but also one of the most misleading for neurodivergent people.

Achievable is often interpreted as “Could this be done?” But for neurodivergent implementation, that is not enough.

The better question is:

Can this be done with the person’s real sensory, emotional, energetic, social, temporal, and executive capacity?

A goal may be theoretically achievable and still not be capacity-matched.

This criterion can load all five SNIP domains.

It loads Motor & Energy Rhythms because energy is not always stable. A person may have high capacity in the morning and almost no functional access at night. They may hyperfocus intensely and crash afterward. They may need movement, rest, transition time, or recovery blocks.

It loads Sensory & Emotional Processing because sensory overload, anxiety, shame, frustration, or emotional intensity can reduce available capacity. Sensory research with autistic adults makes clear that sensory experiences can be complex, cumulative, and deeply connected to participation in everyday environments (MacLennan et al., 2022, 2024).

It loads Executive Function & Systems Thinking because even a realistic goal still requires initiation, planning, switching, monitoring, and completion. Executive function differences in autism and ADHD are relevant here because they shape how people plan, organize, adapt, and sustain goal-directed behavior in everyday life (Barkley, 2012; Wallace et al., 2016).

It loads Cognitive & Temporal Regulation because duration and complexity are often misestimated.

It loads Social & Communication Styles when the goal involves meetings, visibility, feedback, negotiation, response time, or relational uncertainty.

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will work on my course for one hour every evening.”

This may look realistic. But it may ignore the person’s real energy rhythm. Evening may be the lowest capacity time. The transition into the task may require more activation than expected. Social demands earlier in the day may have consumed language and executive access. Repeatedly missing the goal may then create shame, not progress.

A neuroinclusive version might be:

“I will work on the course three times this week for 25 minutes during my higher-energy window. On low-capacity days, the fallback step is to open the file and write one bullet.”

This is not less ambitious. It is more structurally resilient.

The key question becomes:

Can I do this with my real capacity, not my ideal-capacity fantasy?

Upgrade: Achievable becomes capacity-matched and recovery-aware.

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Relevant: The Problem of Masking Goals

In SMART, a goal should be relevant. It should matter. It should fit the larger purpose.

This seems straightforward, but relevance can be complicated for neurodivergent people, especially when they have spent years adapting to environments that did not fit them.

A goal can feel relevant because it is socially rewarded. It can feel relevant because someone else expects it. It can feel relevant because it promises safety, approval, belonging, or reduced criticism. It can also be a masking goal.

Examples include:

“I should network more.”“I should reply faster.”“I should be more consistent.”“I should be less sensitive in meetings.”“I should be better at spontaneous communication.”“I should stop needing so much recovery time.”

These goals may sound professional, mature, or reasonable. But some of them may be built around becoming less visibly neurodivergent rather than building a sustainable way of working.

Relevant therefore loads Social & Communication Styles, because social norms, belonging, directness, visibility, communication expectations, and masking are often involved.

It also loads Sensory & Emotional Processing, because shame, guilt, rejection sensitivity, self-doubt, or fear of being difficult can distort what feels important.

It loads Executive Function & Systems Thinking, because the person must separate their own needs and values from external demand, internalized correction, and systemic pressure.

The research on camouflaging is important here. Autistic adults describe camouflaging as a strategy used to navigate social expectations, but also as something that can carry mental health costs (Bradley et al., 2021). Camouflaging can also be understood as a response to stigma and social identity threat (Perry et al., 2022). If relevance is shaped by fear of stigma, then a goal may become less about fit and more about appearing acceptable.

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will attend two networking events this month to grow my business.”

This may be relevant in a traditional business development model. But it may not fit the person’s actual nervous system or communication style. It may create sensory overload, social masking, recovery debt, and avoidance.

A neuroinclusive version might be:

“I will create two low-sensory visibility touchpoints this month: one LinkedIn post and one written follow-up to a warm contact. This supports business growth without relying on high-masking networking environments.”

The goal remains relevant. The pathway changes.

The question becomes:

Does this goal fit my nervous system, values, context, and actual way of working, or does it only fit an external ideal?

Upgrade: Relevant becomes fit-based and self-trust-informed.

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Time-Bound: The Problem of Time as a Neutral Container

In SMART, a goal should be time-bound. It should have a deadline, time frame, or completion point.

For neurodivergent people, this is often one of the most significant friction points.

Time-bound assumes that time can be used as a stable organizing structure. It assumes that a deadline clarifies action. It assumes that “by Friday” creates orientation.

But for many neurodivergent people, time is not experienced as a smooth, linear, equally available resource.

This is not only a state issue. A person can be regulated and still experience time blindness, Now/Not Now processing, delayed activation, difficulty estimating duration, transition friction, hyperfocus, or difficulty sensing how far away a deadline really is.

Research on ADHD has repeatedly highlighted the relevance of time perception and temporal self-regulation. Barkley (1997) placed time and self-regulation at the center of a broader theory of ADHD. More recent reviews also describe time perception as a clinically relevant area in adult ADHD, while noting that different aspects of time perception may be affected in different ways (Mette, 2023; Ptacek et al., 2019).

Regulation may reduce panic. It does not automatically create reliable time architecture.

Time-bound primarily loads Cognitive & Temporal Regulation because it requires time perception, sequencing, duration estimation, pacing, and future orientation.

It also loads Executive Function & Systems Thinking because deadlines need to be translated into steps, checkpoints, reminders, and restart points.

It loads Motor & Energy Rhythms because time windows interact with activation, fatigue, and recovery.

It can also load Sensory & Emotional Processing because deadline pressure may trigger alarm, freeze, urgency, or avoidance.

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will finish the report by Friday.”

This is time-bound, but it does not create the conditions for temporal access. Friday may feel far away until it suddenly becomes immediate. The goal may still lack start points, intermediate anchors, recovery buffers, and a way back in after interruption.

A neuroinclusive version might be:

“I will finish the report by Friday with visible anchors: outline Tuesday morning, rough draft Thursday afternoon, final review Friday morning, one restart block if I lose momentum, and one recovery block after submission.”

This does not remove the deadline. It makes time visible, buffered, and restartable.

The question becomes:

What are the time anchors, buffers, transitions, and restart points that make this deadline usable?

Upgrade: Time-bound becomes time-anchored, buffered, and restartable.

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Why Access Check Is Not Enough

Access matters, but access check alone is not the whole solution.

Some barriers are state-based. If a person is dysregulated, overloaded, ashamed, exhausted, or in threat mode, they may temporarily lose access to planning, communication, self-trust, time sense, or initiation. In that case, regulation comes first.

But some barriers are trait-based. They remain relevant even when the person is regulated.

A person may still need visible time anchors. They may still need written processing. They may still need sensory predictability. They may still need body doubling, templates, external sequencing, reduced task switching, recovery buffers, or asynchronous communication.

This is where coping strategies and design strategies become necessary.

The point is not:

“Regulate, then use SMART normally.”

The point is:

“Regulate enough to see the real load. Then design the goal around the neurodivergent profile.”

Access check reveals what is currently available. SNIP-informed design reveals what needs to be built into the goal so it can work repeatedly in real life.

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A Neuroinclusive Upgrade to SMART

A neuroinclusive SMART goal keeps the original strengths of SMART but adds a design layer.

The upgraded translation looks like this:

Specific → bounded and startable

The goal must have a clear entry point and a defined boundary.

Measurable → shame-safe and process-aware

Progress must be visible without turning measurement into self-attack.

Achievable → capacity-matched and recovery-aware

The goal must fit real energy, sensory, emotional, social, and executive capacity.

Relevant → fit-based and self-trust-informed

The goal must reflect true fit, not only external expectations or masking pressure.

Time-bound → time-anchored, buffered, and restartable

The goal must include visible time structures, transition support, recovery, and a way back in after interruption.

This creates a more precise model:

SMART defines the goal.State determines whether goal work is possible right now.Access determines which functions are available.SNIP reveals where the goal creates load.

Design makes the goal workable.

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Example: From SMART to Neuroinclusive SMART

A classic SMART goal might be:

“I will publish one article every Friday for the next eight weeks.”

This goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. It looks strong.

But neurodivergent implementation may reveal hidden load:

The first step may not be visible. The goal may trigger perfectionism or shame. The weekly pace may not match energy rhythms. Publishing may carry social visibility load. A missed Friday may lead to all-or-nothing collapse. The workflow may require too much task switching. The deadline may not include time anchors or restart points.

A neuroinclusive version might be:

“I will publish four articles over the next eight weeks using a repeatable five-step workflow: idea capture, outline, draft, edit, publish. Each article gets one visible next step at a time. Progress is measured by workflow movement, not perfection. If a publishing date is missed, the restart step is to open the draft and write the next heading. Publishing days are followed by a lower-demand recovery block.”

This version is still goal-oriented. It is still structured. It is still measurable. It is not less serious.

It is simply designed around the nervous system and cognitive profile that has to carry it out.

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Why This Helps Neurotypical Project Leaders Too

Although this upgrade is designed through a neurodivergent lens, it is not only useful for neurodivergent people.

Neurotypical project leaders also benefit from goals that are bounded, emotionally safer, capacity-aware, fit-based, and anchored in real time structures. Teams do not usually fail because people enjoy being unclear, inconsistent, or late. They often fail because goals are formulated at the level of desired output, while the actual implementation conditions remain invisible.

A neuroinclusive SMART upgrade makes those conditions visible earlier.

It reduces unnecessary pressure. It lowers the emotional cost of feedback. It makes recovery and restart part of the system instead of treating them as exceptions. It prevents avoidable ambiguity. It helps project leaders see when a goal needs a clearer entry point, a better metric, a more realistic capacity plan, a stronger fit check, or a more usable time structure.

That is not a special accommodation. It is better project design.

In this sense, neuroinclusive goal-setting is not a niche practice. It is a stress-tested version of goal-setting. It is built for nervous systems under real-world conditions: changing priorities, limited energy, social pressure, uncertainty, deadlines, interruptions, feedback, and recovery needs.

For neurotypical leaders, this approach can reduce friction across the whole team. For neurodivergent team members, it can be the difference between being labelled inconsistent and being properly supported to execute.

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Implications for Projects, Leadership, Coaching, and Education

In workplaces, schools, coaching settings, and leadership development, SMART goals are often used as if they are neutral. When a person fails to meet a SMART goal, the failure is often interpreted as lack of commitment, lack of discipline, poor prioritization, or weak accountability.

For neurodivergent people, that interpretation can be wrong.

The goal may have failed because it was not bounded enough to start. It may have failed because the measurement system created shame. It may have failed because capacity was estimated from an ideal day. It may have failed because the goal reflected masking rather than fit. It may have failed because the deadline was not translated into usable time architecture.

The problem was not necessarily motivation.

It may have been design.

A neuroinclusive approach does not remove accountability. It makes accountability more accurate. It asks what conditions are necessary for the goal to become usable, trackable, recoverable, and sustainable.

This is especially important in project settings, where neurodivergent people may be highly capable, creative, analytical, committed, and original, while still struggling with conventional goal systems that ignore access, load, time, sensory conditions, or recovery.

The goal is not to lower expectations. The goal is to stop confusing unsupported implementation with lack of ability.

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Conclusion

SMART goals are useful, but incomplete.

They define what success should look like. They do not automatically define what the nervous system needs in order to move toward that success.

For neurodivergent people, the missing layer matters. Goal-setting must account for state, access, neurodivergent load, and trait-aware design.

Specific must become bounded and startable.Measurable must become shame-safe and process-aware.Achievable must become capacity-matched and recovery-aware.Relevant must become fit-based and self-trust-informed.Time-bound must become anchored, buffered, and restartable.

This is not a softer version of goal-setting.

It is a more accurate one.

Because a goal is only effective when the person can access the path toward it.

SMART defines the goal.Neurodivergence shows where the load is.Design makes it workable.

Want to apply this in practice?

The SNIP™ Card Deck helps you identify where a goal, project, or leadership demand creates neurodivergent load — across sensory, temporal, energetic, social, and executive domains.

For the full framework behind this approach, read Gentle Leading & Neurodivergence-Inclusive Leadership by Alexandra Robuste.

Explore the SNIP™ Card Deck and the book to design goals that are clearer, more accessible, and sustainable for everyone.

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References

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Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

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