Now that we’re a week into a new year it’s time for me to look at my New Years Resolutions and turn them into something useful.
As a very first step, let’s look at the label: Resolutions? What a big word! That’s something the UN passes and which then promptly gets ignored. Actually, I prefer having goals. They are less nebulous than resolutions, something you actually have a chance of reaching.
So how to set good goals for the new year? It’s quite easy to increase your chances of success. As I’ve looked at my reached and missed goals, I’ve collected a couple of common traits for the successes - and it was all in the setup. It’s not a sign of “lacking will”, but of a badly thought out goal when you fail.
Keep it measurable
Let’s start with the most common of all: “I’d like to lose weight!”. As it is worded, it has a very high chance of failing. Why? First of all, because it has no measurable goal. How will you know if you are successful? If you lost one pound? Five? Rule #1 of achievable goals is “Keep it measurable!”.
Depending on what you measure, it might be a good idea to change how you measure it. If you measure something that simply keeps adding up (i.e. money earned - you can never ‘unearn’ money) , a spot check is enough. If it’s something that changes over time, it might be a good idea to use an average, or set a threshold for a certain time. After all, you want to lose a pound or three to keep it off, right? No gain if it’s back the next day.
Time matters
So let’s take another goal, “I’d like to get 1000 hits/day on my website”. It’s measurable, so we’re good, right? Well, not quite. While you can certainly measure if you have reached it, it doesn’t mean much without a time frame.
Compare it to taking a trip - when you have an end date, you know how fast you need to travel. If there’s no end date, there’s quite a chance you’ll get stuck in every cantina on the way. Attaching a velocity makes it a bit more tangible.
Not only that, it can also serve as a coarse reality check. Looking at our goal, going from 0 to 1000 hits in a week is hard. Doing it in a month is more likely, and within 3 months seems well within reach.
Yes, New Year’s Resolutions have an implicit time frame of one year, but spell it out. Otherwise, you’ll convince yourself that it doesn’t have an end date.
Keep it at the edge of your range
A goal that is easily reachable is not much of a motivator - it’s good to aim a bit higher. The classic example comes from sports - win the locals, win the regional, or something else that you’ve never achieved before. So it’s OK to not be sure if you can reach the goal. Just make sure it isn’t completely unattainable - “I want to defeat the laws of gravity by next Tuesday” will most certainly frustrate you.
But as long as it’s within reach, it doesn’t even matter that much if you miss it a bit. Even a goal that you don’t reach still helps you steer in the right direction. Missing it by a huge margin, however, is an indication that something went wrong.
Pick a goal. Any goal
Sometimes, you don’t know enough to pick a goal within your range. If you do something new, you often won’t even know what the range is. As an example, I’ve taken on the job of promoting my wife’s designs to stores. I have no idea how much time it takes to place them in an additional store. So I just picked a velocity that seemsreasonable - a store per month - and a relatively short time frame. So the goal is “Place it in three new stores by the end of March”. We’ll see how it goes.
Keep steering
To go back to the trip analogy - you don’t just set the steering wheel at the start and go. Not even if it’s entirely straight. You always make small adjustments as you go. The same is true of your goals - keep reassessing and adjusting your goals. Add new ones. Move the goal posts to keep it at the edge of your range. And - very important - kill goals that don’t matter to you any more. Don’t waste your time trying to achieve something you don’t want.
Commit publicly
Share your goals with somebody. Your spouse, a friend, a colleague. It helps immensely - now there’s somebody who can motivate you when the going gets tough. At the very least, put them in writing somewhere so you can check them.
In that spirit, here’s my the public part of my list:
Health
- Lose 1 pound / week
- Be able to run a mile in 10 minutes. (Yes. I’m that out of shape. Sad, but true)
- Get a complete health checkup
Website
- Get a new improved design on WP2.0
- Get to 1000 visits/week by end of February and maintain through March
- Increase the #of RSS subscribers by 50. (Compare weekly averages)
Skills
- Piano: Get two pieces (one old, one new) to recital level by end of March
- Piano: Increase practice time to one hour/day
- Try out Toastmasters for at least 30 days
- Get GTD fully set up. That includes a clean desk!