How To Stick to your New Year Resolutions (or any goals you set yourself)

The topic for the beginning of the year – New Year Resolutions.

There are many that hold the view it’s a load of baloney and others who religiously set them every year.

 People set NY resolutions for things like lose weight, get fit, save more money, reduce footprint, and take more weekends off, but never really give much thought beyond the few-word phrase.

A NY resolution is really just setting fresh goals at the beginning of the year.

Many love them because the new year is a great time to do a reset and a fresh start, put the previous year behind you and the things you didn’t get to accomplish and start fresh.

Now, this is great in theory, only there needs to be a bit more work than just writing a list of dot points.

Setting the Goals (NY Resolutions)

Let’s now drop the New Year and make this about setting some new goals regardless of the time of year. After all, New Year's Resolutions really are just that – goals.

You made have heard the term SMART goals. Although you may think this is an old concert that is dead and buried, it really is the best way to set your goals to ensure you reach them. This is the first step in the goal process.

Below is a quick summary of setting a SMART goal. To dive deeper, refer to my blog post on Setting Smart Goals.

The first step in setting a good goal is getting specific. The S in Smart. Plan effectively with specific targets in mind.

The second set is ensuring the goal is Measurable. The M in SMART. Track your progress and reevaluate along the way.

The third step is making sure the goal is Attainable. The A in SMART. Set realistic goals that are challenging but achievable.

The fourth step is making sure it is Relevant. The R in SMART. Ensure the goal serves a relevant purpose.

The fifth and final step is ensuring it is Time-bound. The T in SMART. Specify a deadline, monitor progress, and reevaluate.

Basically, you need to get into the nitty-gritty detail when you set a goal, don’t just say lose weight, instead say something like weigh 75kg by 30 June.

The second step in the goal process is to set a plan for reaching this goal. This is one of the main reasons that people don’t reach a goal or NY Resolution, or why they give up. Without a plan on how you will get there, there is no focus and no clear direction.

Let’s go back to the weight loss example. If you want to lose 5kg in 3 months, then what will be required for that to happen?

Break down the goal – that’s 1.66 kg per month. Do I need to change my eating habits? Do I need to get moving more? What do I need to do to work towards this?

In business, I suggest breaking down a goal into milestones. I teach this whole process in my coaching programs. To give an overview though it looks like this.

Start with the goal you want to reach. I suggest focusing on a short-term goal, one that can be achieved in 90 days, or a major part of it can be achieved in 90 days.

An example of a major part ma be a business goal for the year is to reach a 6 figure turnover. But because you are still back at the beginning with a very small turnover, you need to walk before you run, and you will need to set smaller markers before the 6 figures.

This might look like $1k month, $5k month, and then the $8,333 month which gets you to the $100k consistently over the 12 months.

Once you have a 90-day goal, break it into the major milestones required to complete that goal. For example – launching a website might be broken into – setting up domain and hosting, creating the webpages, creating a marketing plan, setting up email responders etc.

After you have a list of the major milestones, break the major milestones into all the tasks that need to be done to reach that milestone. Using the example of creating the webpages, you would list all the pages you plan on creating, you may list do a photo shoot or collect photos for the website, etc.

The list of tasks for each milestone is what you will need to focus on over the 90 days. These are your To-Do’s to complete that goal. It is now starting to look more achievable and a little less overwhelming.

To organise this list further, we mark next to each task if it needs to be completed in months 1,2, or 3.

We collate the month 1 tasks and mark next to the task if it should be completed in weeks 1,2 3 or 4 of that month. The following month you would do the same and repeat at month 3.

The tasks in week 1 can then be scheduled into your calendar or diary. The following week you would schedule week 2, and so on.

The third step in the goal process is a regular review. Now depending on whether this is personal or business, this may be a weekly or monthly review or both.

The review process involves looking back at the goal that was set and the plan to reach it and seeing where you are at compared to your plan. If you are behind, you can look a little deeper as to why to help correct the path moving forward. If you are ahead, you may need to tweak the plan for the coming weeks.

In my business, I do this weekly. As I schedule the next week's tasks, I review what I didn’t get done and incorporate those into my future plan.

The other reason you perform a review is to see if you have reached your goal. If we go back to the weight loss goal, if you never step back on the scales, you won’t know if you have reached your weight loss goal.

So, there you have it. Don’t just set a simple goal and forget about it and wonder why you never reach it.

Set the goal – a SMART goal.

Plan out how to reach the goal.

Review your progress.

If you are wanting to do further work around goal clarity and planning, reach out and book a free Discovery Session with me. Click the button at the top.