Everyone has heard the statistic that on average, 80 per cent of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February. Nonetheless, setting clear goals for the next year is an important part of the planning process.
Here’s how to do it right.
If you want something to happen in life, you have to take action.
1. Retrospective. What have you learnt from the past year?
Take a look at the year that has just passed. What did you do? What did you achieve?
At first glance, your answer might be not much, but if you take the time to reflect, you will be surprised by how much you actually did.
A tip here is to go through your calender from January to December to help jog your memory.
Next, list the events, achievements, and activities that made you happy. Note these down.
Write down the things that went wrong, were a waste of time, or that you would like to avoid. What can you learn from these events? And how can you stop or improve on these items?
When you have completed this task, collect the key insights you have gathered from your retrospective. These are the insights and values that you want to take into account for planning your New Years resolutions.
2. Brainstorm. What is important for you in the New Year?
Next, start brainstorming a wishlist of what you want for yourself in the next year.
This can be anything, from health and fitness, to financial goals, to values you want to work on, for example, kindness, or patience.
Compile a wishlist of where you want to go personally and professionally. Of where you want to travel or who you want to meet, or who you want to be, and crucially, also what you want to get rid of.
Key is to write this list down. Then take the time to reflect and discover what you truly want to focus on. Some years I decide to focus on just one area of my life. For example my career. And then I dedicate that year to the ‘year of the career’ or whatever else I have decided to focus on.
Other years, I have a handful of key goals spanning my personal and professinal life that I want to achieve.
Discover what your next year will be for you.
3. Define. Make your resolutions clear and measurable.
Once you have your New Year’s resolution or resolutions (at least one overarching goal or 4-5 smaller goals), define them clearly.
What does the goal mean exactly? Make more money is not a clear goal. Increasing your income by 10% is.
Define your goals clearly and decide how you will measure them.
Then, break them down into smaller segments. Break your New Year’s resolutions into quarterly or even monthly goals that you can track.
So you want to run a marathon? Write down the date of the race, then work backwards to calculate how much you will need to train. Then do a sanity check, is it realistic?
Once you have your clearly defined and measurable goals, write them down in a place where you will be reminded of them daily.
4. Make it happen. Take daily small steps to reach your goal.
The last and the most crucial step is taking concrete actions to make your New Year’s resolutions happen. However, if you have done the first few steps this part should be simple.
Take the goals that you have split into the manageable segments and implement the plan that you have set for yourself.
Track your progress along the way.
If you notice that you are falling off track, step back and reevaluate why a particular goal is not working. Perhaps it is no longer relevant, or maybe you just need to adapt a small aspect of it.
Even if your daily actions feel small and inconsequential, it is exactly these small daily steps that will make your goals happen.
So, have fun planning and happy New Year!
