01/04/2023
Yes, I said throw them out. Tear them up. Flush them. Resolutions don’t work! It’s not because we don’t give it a good go of it. It’s not because we’re not serious. That’s not it at all! It’s because we set too many and don’t put in place a monitoring system to ensure success. That’s why they fail.
So here we are in the beginning of 2023 with 5, 10, 15 or more resolutions for this year. Research shows you may accomplish 2. Stephen Covey says, “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, unapologetically – to say no to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”
What is your bigger yes for this year? I went from about 8 goals last year – only achieving 1 with 2 still in process, to 3 total goals this year.
Take your list of resolutions and really look at them. Are there any commonalities? Health and wellness? Professional development? Travel? Spiritual development? Group them together by those categories. Which categories have the most resolutions listed under them? Decide from those, at most, 3 goals you want to accomplish.
I know most people are thinking, “3 goals? Really?” OK. Say you achieve those 3 goals a fourth or half way through the year. Then pick 3 more. The game’s not over once those 3 are accomplished. That’s the beauty of laser focusing your goals. The fewer you work on at one time, the more you can accomplish. Then, at end of year, you won’t find yourself with 8 goals and only 1 accomplished, like I did, but you’ll find by only having 2 or 3 at a time, you have achieved 4, 6, or more during the year! That’s the power of focused energy!
We need focused energy on only a few goals because the fact is life happens. There’s that unexpected presentation that needs done, the child’s science project they tell you about the night before it’s due, the pet that vomits all over the living room carpet. In The 4 Disciplines of Ex*****on, they refer to this as “the whirlwind”, and I think that is a pretty fair description. It can easily suck you up and carry you away if you’re not mindful of it. The whirlwind called life happens, so we must take that into consideration when setting goals.
If you’re having a hard time choosing 3 goals, you can use a little diagram called an impact-effort matrix to help you to decide. For each of the goals you are considering, you rank them on the grid by how much impact you think they will have on your life and the amount of effort you have to put into them to achieve them. It looks something like this:
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You want to choose goals that are in the upper left quadrant. Upper right is a possibility, but I wouldn’t choose more than 2 goals if you’re pulling from over there. The purpose of this exercise is to prevent choosing goals that fall into the lower right quadrant.
Success! You now have your goals set for the year. In the next article, we’ll cover how to set sub-goals that drive progress of your primary goals. This is key to achieving overall goals!
Feel free to share below what your goals are for 2023. There’s nothing like some good old accountability by putting it out there for others to see.
