Goal Setting Effectively for the New Year
Here we are at the start of the new year, and as always, a large number of us have put together a list of New Year’s resolutions. Lose weight, make money, stop smoking…the list goes on, right? It’s understandable that we are compelled to put this list together at the beginning of the year, after all, it’s a clean slate, the opportunity to begin anew! However, looking back, how often have you ever really stuck to your New Year’s resolutions? I will guess not often at all. Statistics prove that we have lofty goals for the first few weeks of the year, then life takes over, we lose sight of our goals and we end up at the end of the year 10lbs heavier, broke, with a cigarette hanging from our lip wondering what the hell happened. What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So let’s do it different this year! But how? See below for a few tips to stay on track for 2017.
Don’t go crazy with too many goals
This is often our biggest mistake, trying to fix everything that is wrong about our lives all at once. How about picking 1 or 2 really impactful goals to focus on. Go ahead and make a big list, then pare it down and truly decide what is the most important to you and what can have the biggest and most positive outcome for your life.
Break it down into smaller pieces
As I mentioned above, too many times we come into the new year hot, juggling our resolutions like a crazed jester, then it all falls apart, and we abandon it all. If you follow the first tip, only focusing on one or two goals, it will be easy to break those down into smaller goals throughout the year. Example, you want to increase your income by $20,000 in 2017. That means you would need to earn an additional $1667 each month to make that happen. You could then look at it by the week as well. Put some action steps along side the goals and now you are cooking. So if the goal is to make more income, how many more sales would you need to make in order to realize that goal? When you look at the smaller goals, the actions needed to achieve them, and you look at them on a regular basis, it is less overwhelming. Which leads me to the next tip…
Write down your goals
Not only should you write them down, write them down someplace where you can look at them every day. It helps keep you accountable and focused! If you use a traditional hand written calendar, write your goals (and action steps) for each month, week and day in advance, same thing for digital calendars, you can set reminders, events, etc that will pop up on your phone and desktop to keep you on track. You can always tweak as you go, however, a reminder when you open up the month of February that you committed to some goals, might snap you out of abandoning your resolutions.
Set new goals throughout the year
Get yourself out of the habit of waiting until January 1st to set goals! You will find there to be less pressure, and as you master your New Year’s resolutions from January, you might just have the confidence to keep going by setting more and bigger goals for yourself. As you get into the habit of always creating new goals and aspirations for yourself, you will realize that there is no reason at all to wait until January 1st, you will have been a goal ninja all year long!
Also published on Medium.
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