Don’t set a resolution this year.

Try setting monthly SMART goals this time.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

We are back again to another end of the year and setting up new year resolution. Every new year we start with new goals and full motivation to change everything. You are in full energy to get most of this year but day after day the motivation gets down, some goals don’t even look relevant after just a few weeks. With each day passing you are re-evaluating your decisions and trying to think that you can’t meet the goals now. You are having less time, the work has increased.

What new year resolution is like? Setting unrealistic goals, making big expectations. Typical new year resolution is like “I’m gonna to write a book this year”. what happens then, you write a few pages, make some progress, get some pleasure and things start to change now, you’re getting more tired at work, having less time for family and you just can’t think of writing more. You forget about your resolution and get back to your normal life. This year it isn’t going to be like this. Instead of making unrealistic expectations and irrelevant goals. Do Less

Believe in the philosophy of “Less is More”, plan for fewer days, do fewer expectations, be less rigid and inflexible.
Don’t plan for a year straight away, plan for months. It is believed that you can form a new habit in 21 days so planning for a month seems a great option while still being flexible enough to change and being relevant with your time and lifestyle. Start small, don’t let your resolution become irrelevant with time and abandoned at the pace of this fast-moving world. Let’s say “ you want to start to focus on your health this year”, Now for health, you can start doing exercise, managing your diet, meditation, etc., start with meditation this month. Make a small goal like “do 5 minutes of meditation each day for this month” and try to accomplish it. Make the goal for a month and track your progress. While they may seem irrelevant but they are especially useful for achieving long-term goals. In fact, they are more important in uncertain situations.

Goals like “losing weight this year” doesn’t work because you can’t measure them you can’t say you met the goals because you didn’t decide a specific measurable goal, something like “losing 2 kg this month” is a much better goal. The SMART criteria is a widely accepted strategic goal setting framework. The mnemonic SMART means the goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

You can’t measure your success of goals unless you track them. Tracking is important, In its simplest form, you are just recording whether you have done your goals or not. How you record this is absolutely up to you. You may use pen and paper, an Excel sheet, a text file, an application, a wall calendar — anything.

The second biggest advantage of tracking is tangible data for analysis. We are so prone to lie to ourselves! When you keep everything in your head, fantasy and illusion are mixed up with the facts. You can justify any action.

Conclusion

Setting up newer resolutions is something that doesn’t work very well for most. This year instead of setting up unrealistic goals try something better this time. Start small, plan for just a month and track your progress. This way you can accomplish your goals easily and actually make progress.