So, it’s the time of year again when most people are setting up resolutions that they will quickly give up a few weeks later. We’ve all done it. The new year comes around, we have this burst of energy and inspiration to do better, and then gone… There’s a variety of reasons why people give up so quickly, but a lot of it comes down to not setting themselves up for success. I’ve written in previous blogs that I don’t like making resolutions for this reason alone, and would rather set a strategy for the year that is comprised of both short term & long term goals that will be achieved in the year and beyond. I want to break down this process and talk about the challenges of setting & sticking to your goals, and some personal tips of how I try to course correct when things don’t go the way I planned.
Setting Achievable Goals
While it’s important to set goals, I think it’s more important to set ACHIEVEABLE goals. A lot of us (myself included) want to shoot for the stars right away which is great from an idea perspective, but not so realistic in most cases to actually execute on. Where I’ve failed the most is setting too large of a goal that wasn’t realistic to achieve without doing a few other things first. The phrase ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ may be cliché but it’s definitely applicable to goal setting. A more realistic approach is to come up with that end goal, but then work backwards and start breaking it down into smaller goals and milestones. I find that these smaller goals allow me to stay motivated by accomplishing ‘more’ things, as well as provide a basis for tracking the timeline of achieving the end goal itself. Just think about it, who doesn’t like adding more wins to their daily life? I promise that while smaller in task, they won’t feel any less important than achieving the giant goal at the end of your timeline.
Setting Yourself Up For Success
So you’ve set some achievable goals, and have a rough timeline of when you want to achieve each of them. Now have you set yourself up to actually succeed? I think it’s extremely important to take a look at your current life and try to unbiasedly review whether or not each of these goals is actually able to be achieved with your current setup.
The first thing I’d review is your routine/day-to-day schedule. If you’re getting up every day at 11am, not doing anything productive until 1pm, and clocking out for the day by 5, then it may be a bit difficult to get anything done. Here’s an example: I recently decided that I wanted to spend more learning about options trading. The problem was, I wasn’t waking up until at least 7:30am PST daily (and sometimes later) and the market had already been open for an hour by that point where a lot of stock movement already happened. Given that this was a goal I was serious about undertaking, I decided to start going to bed earlier, and getting up at 6am so that I was not only awake by market opening but also had 30minutes to get myself together so that I wasn’t half asleep trading. On top of this, it also gave me more time to myself since I wasn’t waking up so close to my start time at work which was an added benefit that I didn’t consider but welcomed. You should also ask whether questions like; do you have the right tools needed to get the job done? Do you have the required skills? If not, you should think about whether it makes sense for you to take these on yourself and acquire them, or whether you need some extra help so that you can focus on what you specialize in. I ended up joining a stock trading discord, as well as have an entire YouTube playlist that I plan on studying to acquire the technical analysis needed to profitably trade.
A harder pill to swallow is asking yourself if this is the right time. This is a hard question to answer as you’re obviously biased, and are going to only want one outcome (to win), but may have to admit that the goal isn’t achievable YET. Perhaps you are looking to start your own business and while you have the plan thought out, you don’t have the capital. Is it worth taking out a loan on your mortgage to pay for the initial idea, or should you save up for one more year and then attempt your idea without risking your house? Perhaps it’s an issue of time, and maybe you aren’t ready to risk your 9 to 5 job to work on your start up full time which means you won’t be able to give your ideas 100% of your effort at the moment.
It’s great to come up with a plan, but even more important to make sure that you’re setting yourself up to succeed and being honest with yourself on whether you can do that or not with your current situation.
Measuring Success & Keeping Yourself Accountable
Ok so you have a plan, and you have the environment setup to succeed… but what does success look like? Is it a clear cut goal that can be defined by a number like losing 10 pounds or making $10,000 in a month? Or is it more subjective like feeling happier and elevating your overall energy levels? Either way, I find it’s best to set up some sort of key success indicators (KPIs) that I can use to benchmark how I am performing (sorry, my business lingo is coming out). This way, you can hold yourself accountable on how you are doing with achieving your goals, and make changes if you need to. Some examples of how I am currently tracking my goals that could help give you some reference points:
- I started to track all of my macros (calories, fat, carbs, protein, etc) with My Fitness Pal so I can understand my eating habits and try to lose a few pounds by making sure I stay under 2,100 calories
- I write in a daily gratitude journal to record my mood, what I am thankful for, and as small reminders to be appreciative of what I have
- I write down all of my workouts in a journal, including the weight lifted & reps so that I can look back every week and push myself to either lift heavier or add more reps to the sets
Holding yourself accountable and tracking your progress is an important step to help you define what success looks like, and making it clear as to what you have to do to achieve it.
Final Thoughts
Listen, in no way am I going to claim to be an expert on success or achieving my goals. I’ve set a ton of goals that I have either failed at, or put on pause for a variety of reasons. The above framework may not work for everybody, but it’s a structure that I’ve implemented into my life over the last few years to help me get a little further each day with what I want to achieve. I would be lying if I said that you are never going to fail or get behind on achieving what you want… you will. That’s ok. I know it can feel extremely discouraging to set goals and not accomplish them, but it’s important to take these experiences as lessons and learn what you need to change. With this, you not only can achieve your goals on your next try, but you can set bigger and better goals that won’t be so hard to conquer in the future.