It’s that time of year again. Time to start your New Year’s resolutions and after the first of the year, if you are like me, you will have already given up on keeping your resolutions. Why do we fail keeping our resolutions? Making a promise without a plan or accountability is worthless.
Setting Goals
Think about all of the things that you want to accomplish in the next 12 months. I recommend that you select 10 reasonable goals. The operative word is reasonable. If one of your goals is to scale Mount Everest but you have never climbed a mountain and haven’t been training to do so, that’s probably not reasonable.
Write your goals down. This will help you remember what your goals are and keep track of your progress achieving them. To make your goals attainable, you need to create a timeline for each of them. I wouldn’t make the deadline for all of your goals to all be accomplished the end of the year. Schedule them throughout the year so you can celebrate each of your goals that are achieved.
Obstacles
It’s also important to identify the obstacles that could get in your way to achieve each of your goals. There are always obstacles. If there weren’t, all of our goals would be easily met. Identify anything that is going to get in your way and plan to overcome those obstacles.
Assistance
Often goals cannot be achieved on your own. Most of my goals require help from colleagues, friends and family. For each of your goals, make sure that you list everyone who you will need to help you.
Skills and Abilities
Sometimes we are aggressive with our goal setting, but haven’t completely determined if we have the appropriate skills and abilities to achieve those goals. Research what you need to do to acquire those skills and abilities and do it.
Make Your Goals into an Actionable Plan
Once you have put your list of goals together with a timeline for each one, identified your obstacles, added the people who can help you, and received the skills and abilities to accomplish those goals, you can create and execute your plan.
The only New Year’s resolution that should be made this year is to never do New Year’s resolutions anymore. Set reasonable, attainable goals and develop an action plan to complete them.
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