Achieving Your Goals or Succeeding with New Year's Resolutions
I remember, not very fondly, the days when I had to go to a gym to get a good workout (now I just carry heavy stuff most of the day as part of our homesteading projects) and every January the gym would suddenly be overrun with mobs of New Year’s Resolutioners. Fortunately for me, the majority of them would be gone by February, but less fortunate for those abandoning their workout plans.
Research on New Year’s Resolutions shows that more than 50% of people set aside their resolutions by the end of the first month.
I work with organizations to improve their communications skills, but the purpose of that endeavor is to help teams achieve specific goals. Naturally, we also spend a lot of time talking about performance and goal attainment.
Thus I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at the research on how we can best attain our goals, or in the current case, our New Year’s Resolutions. Here is a quick summary of what some of the research tells us.
1. Positive (or approach-oriented) goals are more likely to be reached than negative (or avoidance-oriented) goals. In other words, a resolution to be healthier for your family would be more likely to succeed than a resolution to drink less.
2. That said, adaptability in mindset is also important. Sometimes switching from an approach-oriented mindset to an avoidance mindset can help when that mindset is more suited to a given context. For example, if friends invite you out for a drink, in that moment focusing on your family-related goals might be more helpful, but when you find yourself in a bar, focusing on the more immediate goal of drinking less might provide greater benefit.
3. Concrete goals are far more successful. A resolution to lose weight is amorphous and rarely attained, so make it concrete, e.g. resolve to lose one pound a week for two months.
4. Specific plans are also necessary. If you just resolve to play guitar more often, it is quite likely the guitar will continue to sit in the corner gathering dust. If you resolve to play guitar Monday and Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. for 30 minutes, you are more likely to actually play the guitar.
5. Tie your goal to something you already do. For example, every afternoon at 3:00 p.m. I have to put wood in the wood burner to keep our heat going. If I want to be more successful in my resolutions to read or play guitar more, I will plan to sit down and do one of those activities immediately after putting wood in the burner. James Clear does a good job discussing this in his book Atomic Habits.
6. Your goals have to be aligned with your values, i.e. things that are important to you. If you resolve to read more, but reading is not linked to something you value, your pile of books will remain relatively undisturbed. Say, though, that you prize creativity, and you commit to reading more to spur further creativity, your odds of reading significantly increase.
7. Self-control and determination tend not to be enough on their own to achieve goals. For most us, it is also necessary to have a support system, someone such as a coach, helping to keep you on track and to hold you accountable to the commitment you’ve made.
8. Have a plan to deal with setbacks. Research shows people’s motivation with respect to their goals varies widely over time. Rather than a nice curve, graphs of people’s motivation across time tend to look more like a spiderweb. Everyone’s motivation is different so have a plan that will work for you to get you back on track when your motivation fades. And recognize that your motivation will ebb and flow and that that is normal and okay.
Less than 20 percent of people feel they’ve achieved their New Year’s Resolutions by the end of the year. Most people don’t just give up on them, but they do set them aside to hopefully to achieve them at some future point.
My list here is far from exhaustive, but my point is, you can achieve your goals with a few easy tweaks to your approach. And I wish you success in the New Year.
