What You Need to Know to Accomplish Your Goals This Year
Another year is on us which means lots of New Year’s Resolutions. Do you get excited about setting resolutions? Or do they fill you with dread because they remind you of all the failed resolutions of years past?
I love the new year because I get excited about what’s to come. It’s an opportunity to reflect on what has and hasn’t worked the year previous and continue to move forward working on my goals. Notice I said continue and not start working on my goals. That’s because I often start setting and executing on my goals 1 to 3 months before the New Year. I’ve never been one for setting resolutions, but I’m a big believer in goal setting and that you don’t have to wait until January 1 to start taking action towards your goals. Just a little food for thought.
Whether you started taking action towards your goals before the new year or you’re a January 1 resolution setter, these tips will help you increase your chance of success. A SMART goals worksheet can also be helpful.
Why Resolutions Fail
According to Forbes Health, only 1% of those surveyed kept their resolution all year. A different article by Inc. reports a 9% success rate with New Year's Resolutions. The most favorable numbers I could find still did not surpass 12%. How is it that so many people enter the year with excitement and ambition and all the best intentions to become their best self, but then 88% to 99% do not keep those resolutions throughout the year?
There are many reasons goals or resolutions fail. Some common reasons for failure are:
Setting unrealistic goals
Not tracking the goals
Forgetting about the goal or resolution all together
Not having a plan for how to accomplish the goal
Adopting an all or nothing mindset
The list above is by no means exhaustive but likely covers more than half of resolutions that fall by the wayside.
So how do we set goals or resolutions that we will actually stick with and succeed at so that we can become better versions of ourselves? Let’s start by looking at the SMART goals framework. For years people have been using this framework to set and accomplish goals. It’s definitely stood the test of time. While some might argue that the SMART goals framework has some short comings like relying on an all or nothing mentality or being too outcome focused and not emotion focused, I believe we can overcome these limitations with some additional tips and insights I’ll sprinkle in along the way.
SMART Goals
SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. Let’s work through these.
Specific - You’ll have a better chance at succeeding at your goals if you make them specific. For example, rather than setting a goal to exercise more, try setting a goal to exercise at least 3 times per week or for 150 minutes each week. If you are not already a regular exerciser, either of these more specific expressions of your goal will still help you accomplish your overall goal of exercising more. But laying out the specifics in terms of how many days each week or minutes each week allows you to start to make a plan as to how exercise will fit into your weekly schedule. You can begin to see days and openings in your week where you might have (or not have) the time to go for a walk, take a trip to the gym, or follow along a quick YouTube workout. You can plan accordingly.
Measurable - This helps tackle the second reason listed above that resolutions and goals fail; because people don’t track their progress. Tracking your progress allows you to hold yourself accountable. It also allows you to get motivated by quantifying the progress you are making and thus, encourages consistency.
As you see yourself being consistent, it’s easier to gain momentum. Before you know it, you’ll be closer to accomplishing the goal than you thought. Another benefit of tracking your progress is that it allows you to celebrate the small wins along the way. Even if for some reason you don’t accomplish your big goal by the end the year or whatever time period you’ve set for yourself, being 75%, 50%, or even 10% closer to accomplishing it is something worth noting. Celebrating small wins is a great way to combat the all or nothing thinking that can leave some people feeling like a failure and less motivated to continue. Progress is progress, no matter how small.
Attainable - One of the main reasons people don’t reach their goals is because the goal was unrealistic to start with. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying your goals should be easy. You should absolutely set goals that are challenging or even out right hard. The point of setting goals is to accomplish something you haven’t done before or become a better version of yourself in the process. The fact that you will be entering uncharted territory for you, will bring some challenges. However, your goals have to actually be achievable. If you’ve never been a runner or exerciser before, setting a goal to run a marathon without stopping at the end of the month is not an attainable goal. Setting a goal to be able to run a 5K without stopping is more realistic.
Choosing attainable goals also requires making a plan as to how you will show up to accomplish the goal. Just writing down a goal is not enough to make you successful. You have to have a plan to achieve it. What steps can you take each week to get you closer to the overall goal. Can you schedule 10 minute walks during your lunch break? Do you need to sit down at the beginning of the week and plan which workouts you’ll do on each day? If your goal is to read a certain number of books for the year, do you have 15 to 30 minutes each day that you can reserve for reading? If you have a big goal for the year that’s beginning to feel daunting, try breaking it down into smaller goals you can focus on each month.
Relevant - Some SMART goal users use the R to be realistic. I prefer the R to represent relevance, as choosing a realistic goal can be done by choosing an attainable or achievable goal as demonstrated above. Making sure your goal is relevant to who you want to become or the overall big goal or mission you want to accomplish allows you to tap into your emotional side a bit.
Assessing the relevance of your goal allows you to think about your why? Your why should be deeper than just wanting to fit into an old pair of jeans or reach a certain money goal. Does exercising more or losing weight provide a certain health benefit for you? Does it help you build more stamina for other challenges you might face or activities you want to do (like that marathon you’ve been thinking of doing)? Does reaching a certain financial goal allow you to save for something important to you? Does the extra money allow you to have a specific type of impact for your family or community?
When you are deciding on the relevance of your goal, think about how your goal and the actions you’ll take to achieve it set the stage for the type of person you want to become or the bigger goal you want to accomplish. Tapping into the feelings associated with your why will make you more likely to stick to your action plan on the days when motivation is lacking.
Time bound - This is where you give yourself a deadline. Having your goal be time bound forces you to make some progress towards it instead of it being something you continue to put off. If you have a lot of goals for the year, I recommend working on 3 (maybe 4 max) of them at a time during a 1 to 3 months span. This way you don’t get overwhelmed having too many resolutions or goals to work on at the same time.
Work on executing your action plans a little bit at a time and being consistent. Let’s be real. If you chose your goals or resolutions to become a healthier, more informed, or better version of yourself in any aspect, your intention isn’t likely to go back to being the former version of yourself as soon as the month or year is over. Setting time limits for your goals gives you a manageable chunk of time to focus on creating the habits for long term success.
That’s how to create SMART goals. Don’t overthink it. You can write your SMART goals down in your go to journal or notebook or use a printable or digital worksheet.
How to Succeed with SMART Goals
So we’ve seen how setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound goals can help you succeed in accomplishing what you want to be or do. What else can you do to increase your chance of success with your resolutions this year?
First, write your goals down. You’ve got to get them out of your head. Putting them on paper makes them real and is a great way to hold yourself accountable. Telling trusted friends or family about what you want to accomplish is another great way to bake in some accountability for the year. Once your goals are written down somewhere, it’s easier to track them, as well.
Break your bigger goals down into smaller ones and create an action plan involving the small steps or habits you’ll need to develop along the way.
Then last, but certainly not least, get intimate with your goals. Think of your goals the way you do a relationship. When you are in a new relationship, how often do you think of that special someone? How often do you talk to your best friend or favorite family member? Similar to the way we work to build intimacy in relationships, we’ve got to get intimate with our goals.
If you set specific attainable goals with defined actions to take towards accomplishing them, are tracking your progress and celebrating even small wins, remain laser focused on creating simple habits daily that get you closer to the goal of who you want to become or big picture you are trying to create; and and you do this all for 1 month or 3 months or even 1 year… it’d be hard for you not to be successful. Let that sit for a minute.
Want a little help laying out and strategizing for your goals? Grab this simple worksheet.
Here’s to getting intimate with your goals and crushing them!
