New Year’s resolutions are nothing but medium-term goals. When we begin to see resolutions for what they really are—goals—we can begin to approach them using proven goal setting methods. New Year’s resolutions carry a bit of a stigma, mainly because they are so seldomly adhered to. This is why we need to treat them as real goals. A medium-term goal presents great potential for serious growth. But as with anything of value, it requires a bit of thought and effort.

In this post, we would like to highlight the planning, execution, and follow-up phases of New Year’s resolutions. We will also present the S.M.A.R.T goal setting and execution method, which is a proven way to take the wishful thinking out of goal achievement.

Planning 

Generally, New Year’s resolutions are contained within a 12-month period. Whether it’s something tangible to be realized within the twelve months or whether it’s a habit to be acquired by year’s end, either way, it’s a medium-term goal. A goal of any kind requires a bit of planning, so let’s look at the SMART goal method to help get you on the right track towards your goals.

SMART goals – This acronym is used in high-performance business environments all around the world—and for good reason. As you’ll see when we break it down, it’s a clever acronym because when applied properly it results in an intelligent approach to goal setting that opens itself to real scrutiny. Here’s what it stands for:

Here’s a bit more on each element

Specific – You should be able to summarize your goal in one sentence. To take a classic example of fitness, a non-specific goal would be “to get in shape”, whereas a specific goal would sound something like “to be capable of running 10 km within 60 minutes by April 30”.

Measurable – This is where baseline data and progress assessment come into play. Baseline data, when relevant, is basically a measure of your current level before undertaking the goal. For someone running a business, an example of this measurement could be “improve net revenue from the current $XX (baseline) to $YY (goal)”. This is something that should be calculated and examined regularly throughout the goal period. 

Achievable – This is fairly self-explanatory, but to retake the above fitness example, if the current baseline is running 2 km without stopping, then a 10-fold increase is probably not achievable as a medium-term goal. 

Realistic – Similar to the above element, but another thing to consider here is how the goal will serve you. Is this goal realistically adding value to your life? Does it support your long-term goals? Is it aligned with your morals and values?  

Time-Bound – This is the date by which the goal should be achieved. For a medium-term goal such as a New Year’s resolution, it will be useful to have several time markers upon which you assess the progress toward the ultimate goal. Quarterly milestones are generally useful for this purpose

Write it out

It’s incredibly important to write down this entire goal planning process. Writing is the first step towards manifesting thoughts into reality. Make sure you do this in an editable format, where you can keep notes on progress and make adjustments when necessary

Try this: if your New Year’s resolutions are essentially medium-term goals, write them out next to your short-term and long-term goals. How do they relate to each other? Could one be optimized to better support another? 

Be vocal about your New Year’s resolutions

After you’ve planned and written your New Year’s resolution, announce it to the world. Tell your loved ones or even go as far as sharing it via social media. This has two benefits. The first is that by vocalizing your goals, you are practicing your ability to communicate them clearly. If you are unable to communicate your goals concisely, you perhaps do not understand them well enough yourself. You may notice cracks or gaps in your planning process by verbalizing it. Secondly, it creates accountability and the Law of Attraction (not in the woo woo kind of way). You become accountable for the things you share socially. The success of your goal planning and execution is something that deserves extra accountability. 

Execution

Discipline over motivation – There’s no better way to get into this point than by sharing former US Navy SEAL and author of Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, Jocko Willink’s words on the subject:

“Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.”

The wisdom in these words lies in the fact that motivation can ebb and flow. Discipline, although much more strenuous to activate than motivation, is a constant that you can cultivate despite changing circumstances. Your environment will change. Your boss or loved ones can disappoint you at times, leading to a decrease in motivation. Discipline, however, is your rock, albeit a heavy one at times.

Practice lifting that rock

Discipline is heavy. Just like in the physical world, if we want to accustom ourselves to lifting heavy objects, we must train and therefore embrace discomfort. Using discipline to overcome motivation deficiency will require you to suffer. 

Try this: in the evening of the day that you’ve written out your New Year’s resolution, meditate for 15-20 minutes. Allow yourself to meditate on this single subject: the suffering that will be required to achieve your goal. Visualize yourself getting up early when you haven’t slept well the night before. Picture yourself working in the evening despite a headache. Visualize yourself exercising even though you’re a bit sore. Let this meditation prepare you for the suffering you will encounter when activating your discipline. We all have great capacity for discipline, but we are often unprepared for the suffering that it will require. At times, use silent meditation to contemplate this and thus prepare for this heavy lifting. 

Accept failure 

You will inevitably stumble and fall on the path to realizing your New Year’s resolution. These minor crashes should be celebrated. Each time you fail, you have a valuable opportunity to learn. The only thing preventing this lesson is the inability to accept failure. 

People fail to accept failure for multiple reasons. It could be perfectionism, lack of self-awareness or lack of self-criticism. These are all pitfalls to be avoided. If you have a fear of failure, try this: fail something on purpose. Identify a task that can be done either correctly or incorrectly and that is fairly insignificant. It should be something that holds social accountability. An example could be arriving late to a relatively unimportant meeting, or making several typos in an email to a colleague or superior. It may sound counterproductive, but it is essentially a controlled experiment that will help you familiarize yourself with your failures and deal with them appropriately.

A final note on failure: be compassionate with yourself. When you fail, yes, there are lessons to be learned, but there are also damages to deal with. Be compassionate and forgiving with yourself. It will be counterproductive to harbour anger and resent toward the person most in charge of your own success: yourself. Face failure with a sense of humor and a smile. This light-hearted approach is more likely to inspire creative solutions to the failure-causing obstacle than clenched fists and negative self-talk.

Constant reassessment 

Using the Measurable and Time-bound elements of the SMART goal setting technique as described above, you should periodically reassess your goal. You should be doing this for two main reasons. The first is to measure the success of your goal at regular intervals. This will help you remain on track and make intelligent adjustments. Secondly, you should lend a critical mind to the questions “does this goal still make sense for me” and if so, “I am going about it the most intelligent way”. It’s not a failure to abandon a goal that is no longer relevant.

Another pertinent question to ask yourself is “am working harder than I should be?” Look for more efficient ways to do things. A sneaky pitfall to avoid is the false sense of success that comes from the mere fact of working hard, as so eloquently summed up by Haemin Sunim in his book The Things You Can Only See When You Slow Down:

“It is important that you work hard, but don’t be enamored of the feeling of working hard. If you are drunk on that feeling, then you care less about the actual work than about how you appear to others to be working hard”. 

Finally, seek verbal or written feedback from other people. Remember those people to whom you expressed your goal after the planning phase? Show them what you’ve accomplished so far and ask them how you could be doing better. Ask stakeholders, or even find a mentor who can provide insight into your progress.

Perform tasks mindfully 

When you perform each task with intent and awareness, you become more exact and precise in your actions. This is the opposite of rushing. You can find more enjoyment in your work when you do things slowly and mindfully. This mindful approach fosters the proven approach of quality over quantity. Moreover, doing things with mindful intent allows for time and space for the regular re-evaluations described above. Take deep and mindful breaths before and during each task, enjoy the process, and try to let go of the outcome.

Follow-up on New Year’s resolutions

After the goal deadline has expired, reflect upon the experience just as you had done when you put pen to paper during the planning phase. If you were not able to achieve the goal or only partially, what were the reasons, should you give yourself more time, is there an entirely different outside-the-box approach? If you were successful, how do you feel about it, what allowed you to be successful, how could this be replicated on other goals or scaled out to achieve something even greater? 

Celebrate

Celebrate all milestones and ultimate successes. The path towards achieving your goals doesn’t have to be all blood, sweat and tears. Your goal should have been aligned with some deep moral values or other significant desires that make you who you are. The achievement of this goal represents progress in your self-actualization. This is life and life well lived. If you can’t celebrate life itself, especially the life that you’ve designed and aligned with your morals, then what can you celebrate? 

Essentially, this mindful approach New Year’s resolutions requires thoughtful planning, a process which you should share with others for some accountability. It requires mental preparation for the inevitable suffering and discomfort associated with the work required to achieve the goal. Finally, it will require a critical self-analysis where you challenge your own assumptions and let go of beliefs when they reveal themselves to be inadequate. This process doesn’t have to be sandpaper and scouring pads. Have a light heart, a smile, and sense of humor throughout the process.