Resolve to Succeed: A Step-by-Step Guide to Make Goal Setting Work for You

'Tis the season for New Year's resolutions -- time to eat keto, embrace cardio, speak fluent Spanish, and seize that promotion by the horns. Go get 'em cowboy!

Unfortunately, the reality is that most of us fail to keep the goals we set for ourselves each year. Maybe you've made the same resolution to lose weight in previous years, but you're convinced that this time will be different. Or maybe you already know that your resolution won't hold through February. Before you embark on your 2021 journey toward self-improvement, this post will help you think about whether you're setting the right goals and equip you with some simple tools to stay motivated throughout the process.

Reasons for Failure

In order to set ourselves up for success, it's important to understand why we fail to keep our goals. I've come up with four main reasons for this, which roughly align with the results from scientific studies analyzed here.

1. Vague goals

2. Oversized expectations

3. Plan-less hopes

4. You don't care enough about your goals to make them a reality.

Could Achieve vs. Will Achieve

Most of these problems can be solved by following the SMART system. If you click through the link, you'll see that it's about setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. There are a lot of benefits to using this system. For example, setting specific goals allows you to determine how successful you were over the duration of your goal. If I make the goal to simply "gain weight," it might not be clear whether gaining 0.1lbs, 1lb, 5lbs, or 10lbs should count as success. Writing out specific goals also helps us evaluate whether or not we have oversized expectations, and it's often the first step to creating a plan.

However, once you have an achievable goal in mind, and a plan for completing it, there's another, crucial step. You need to decide how much you care about the end result. Very few goals have no cost, whether it be time, money, or giving up something we enjoy. As Arthur Brookes writes in the Atlantic, many of the times we fail to keep our resolutions, it's because -- when truly presented with the cost of self-improvement -- we'd rather stay the same. We'd rather enjoy our burgers and french fries than get skinny. We'd rather watch our favorite series than go running. Sure, it'd be nice to speak Spanish, but even if we take a trip to Puerto Rico, it'd be easier to just get an interpreter.

One exercise I find helpful for assessing the quality of your goal is to take a hard look at it and answer one simple question: Is this something you could achieve or something you will achieve. You should imagine yourself going through the process of obtaining your goal each day and month of the year, depending on how long the goal lasts. Will you really keep going in the 3rd week of January? What about in March? November? If you're having difficulty envisioning time that far out, or if you have trouble making such a long commitment, you don't have to give up your goal. Instead, resize it until it's something that you can really commit to. If you don't believe you will achieve your goal, there's a good chance you won't.

Tracking Progress and Accountability

Progress tracking is when you budget a regular block of time out of your life to assess your progress towards your goal. It could be every week, biweekly, monthly, etc. depending on the specifics of your goal. You can reflect on what's going well and what's been difficult. It's also an opportunity to celebrate your successes and prepare yourself for the days ahead. Take advantage of apps like online calendars and digital assistants to set up reminders so that you don't forget to check up on your progress. Ideally, this should be time dedicated specifically for checking up on your goal, and you can use your best judgment to decide how long each session should last.

While you can track progress on your own via journaling, you might find that it's more fun and motivating with a partner. If you decide to go the partner route, you'll want to to recruit a *reliable* friend, family member, significant other, (or future significant other 😉) to be your "accountability partner." You can get coffee with them, video chat, or talk on the phone. I'd recommend real-time communication over something like texting, since that can be easier to ignore. Setting aside the time for checkup, even if it's only 15 minutes, shows that you're committed to achieving your goal. If your accountability partner is someone you don't see regularly anymore, it can also be a great way to maintain your friendship, and you can invite your friend to use the same block of time to update you on their own goals.

One caveat here is that you might be able to skip this step if you've signed up for a structured program like weekly dance classes or a semester of Spanish AND purchased it for the duration of your goal. If you've purchased an online course, like a Coursera class, the fact that it's online might make it harder to stick to, so in those cases you might want to invest the effort into progress tracking and accountability.

Remember, you've already decided that you will achieve your goal -- because, for you, it's worth completing. Tracking progress and accountability is just to help you remember your goals and give you bonus motivation when you're feeling down. You should be confident in your future success because you've made a plan and decided that it's important enough to follow. 

Learning to Set Better Goals 

Of course, no one is perfect. Maybe later you'll find out that, despite your best efforts, you set the wrong goal. You don't actually care about losing weight, but you do want to develop a good skincare routine. Use the knowledge you've gained from setting the last goal to create a new, better goal. Maybe you were too ambitious last time -- try a smaller goal, such as eating healthier for a month instead of a year. The more you create goals, the better you'll get at finding the right goals for you. Each time you create a new goal, you should go through the same process. Feel free to ask friends for advice on whether your goals meet each of the steps, and remember that it's better to stick to a smaller goal than give up because you didn't finish a larger one. When you pick a goal, you should always believe that you will complete it.

For all of you folks who prefer this stuff spelled out in simple steps, here's the final guide:

1. Write down your SMART goal, which you will complete, somewhere you can track it (e.g. Google Doc, journal) 
2. Write down a plan for achieving your specific goal. If appropriate, break it down into smaller steps with dates attached to each step. 
3. Create calendar reminders (or use an old-fashioned planner) to mark your weekly/biweekly/monthly progress tracking sessions. Get your accountability partner on board if necessary
4. Put in the work to complete your plan, and attend each of your progress tracking sessions
5. Succeed or fail to meet your goal
6. Create a new goal

Conclusion

Effective self-improvement begins with understanding yourself. No amount of goal setting will help you succeed unless you actually want to achieve the goals you set. Goals are only a tool for helping you do the things you want to do when you need a bit of structure. Which goals are worth your time? That's something only you can answer. (For fun, here's a list of achievable goals for inspiration!)