Posted by We have reached the start of a new year. For many people it is the time to create New Year’s resolutions. It is a time to look to the days and months ahead that the new year will bring and to decide what we want to achieve this year.
When you look forward to the days and months ahead, do you see a brave new year with many opportunities? Do you envision what you can accomplish this year? Do you have a burning desire that you know you will accomplish this year?
I believe it is important to have the courage to act on our desires and to create goals for the year ahead. By doing this, you will be identifying what you want to achieve, but there is more to goal setting than just identifying what you want.
To truly be effective this year, I encourage you to go beyond just identifying what you want. Take additional steps toward successfully achieving your goals by also identifying how you will achieve your goals and when you will achieve them. I also encourage you to create what I call a personal success plan.
Identifying the What
The first thing to do when creating your goals for the new year is to identify what you want to accomplish this year. I suggest you do this by spending some time brainstorming what you want to achieve in each area of your life.
To do this, sit down and think through what you want to achieve in the each of the following areas of your life:
- What do you want to achieve financially?
- What you want to achieve career-wise?
- What are your health goals?
- What are your goals for your family?
This is not an exhaustive list. There may be many other areas of your life to consider than the four examples shown above. The most important thing is to identify the areas of your life where you want to achieve something, and then to write down everything you want to achieve in each of those areas.
Once you have brainstormed you should have a large list of things you want to achieve. Filter that list and create your goals for what you want to most want to achieve for the coming year. These will be your New Year’s resolutions. The goals you will strive to achieve this year.
Identifying the How
Creating New Year’s resolutions is a good first step towards achieving what you want out of life, but if you only identify what you want to achieve, chances are you won’t achieve it. To help ensure you will achieve your New Year’s resolutions, you also need to identify how you will achieve your goals. This means creating strategies for how you will accomplish each of your goals.
As a self-directed leader I have created and regularly review a document I call a personal success plan. In this document I list all of my goals and the strategies I will use to complete those goals. I think of it like a business plan for my life.
You can do the same. Once you have identified your goals, create a document on your computer and call it your personal success plan. List all of your goals in this document, then write down the steps you will take to complete each of those goals. Then review your success plan every week as a reminder of both what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it.
Finally, don’t just identify the what and the how. Follow through on the steps in your strategies so you will make progress in achieving your goals.
Setting a Timeline
Another key aspect of ensuring you achieve your New Year’s resolutions is giving your goals a time component. Don’t just identify the what and the how. Also identify the when.
I do this by setting a deadline for my goals. For example, this year I want to lose weight and I have set myself the goal of losing 10 pounds. Not only that, but I have also set a deadline for achieving this goal by January 31, 2023.
By setting a deadline I am putting pressure on my myself to complete my goal by the chosen date. Without a deadline, I have the whole year ahead of me and it is tempting to put off working on my goal because I have the entire year to complete it. With a deadline of January 31st, I now have only a month in which to complete my goal, so this will motivate me to get it done before I reach my deadline.
Be Specific
Something else that will help you to achieve your goals is to make your goals specific. A vague or unclear goal is hard to achieve, while a specific goal can be measurable and easier to accomplish.
For example, I want to lose weight. If I don’t make this a specific goal, how will I know when I have completed my goal? Am I done as soon as I lose 5 pounds, or do I still need to lose more weight?
My goal for January is to lose 10 pounds. This is specific and I can weigh myself every week to see if I am on track to reaching this goal.
Break Down Large Goals
One last thought I will leave you with is that you can break down large seemingly unachievable or overwhelming goals into smaller pieces. This can help you to see success sooner and to make progress on your larger goals this year.
For example, this year I have the goal to write and publish a book on self-directed leadership. Writing an entire book is a large undertaking. To make this goal more achievable, I can break it down into smaller pieces.
What I can do is to set a goal for 2023 to write one chapter a month for my book. Writing a single chapter is easier than writing an entire book. After 12 months of following this strategy I will have 12 chapters written for my book and I can then move on to the goal of getting my book published.
Another example of breaking down a large goal is my weight loss goal. I need to lose over 30 pounds to reach my target weight but losing this much weight can seem overwhelming. To make my weight loss goal more achievable I set myself the goal to lose 10 pounds by January 31, 2023. This is a smaller and more realistic goal and I believe I can achieve this goal in the timeframe I have chosen. After the end of January I can set a new goal for February and then strive to lose another 10 pounds during the month of February.
Conclusion
2023 is a brave new year with many opportunities available to you. Creating New Year’s resolutions is a great way to take advantage of these opportunities.
By setting goals, you can provide yourself with direction for the coming year. Not only that, but you can also create a personal success plan that identifies both what your goals are and how you will achieve them. Your personal success plan can also identify a timeline for when you will complete your goals. You can also create goals that are specific and measurable to be sure that you known when you are making progress on your goals. Finally, you can break down large goals into smaller, more achievable pieces, to ensure you make progress in achieving your resolutions this year.
My challenge for you this year is to do more than just creating New Year’s resolutions. My challenge to you is to identity not just what you want to achieve, but to also identify how you are going to achieve them and by when.