Here’s How I Set Five New Year’s Resolutions that I Actually Want to Stick to Beyond February
Focus on habits first and uncertain outcomes won’t derail your momentum
After the two years we’ve had, the last thing I wanted to do was set New Years Resolutions and goals for 2022. Like the vast majority of us, I can’t shake the feeling of exhaustion that comes from the ongoing uncertainty of the world.
Why set goals for the future if the future is wildly unpredictable, subject to lockdowns and involves a rollercoaster of emotions from fear, confusion, anxiety, short-lived relief and back to fear again?… Because goals, if they’re habit-focused, are an incredibly useful tool to drive the controllable elements of your life in the direction you so desire.
Outcomes are often not just based on your effort alone. Instead, they are usually a result of circumstances, resources, some luck and of course, your efforts. Ultimately, New Year’s resolutions and goals are often discarded early in the year because working towards an outcome, especially in an environment with a heightened level of uncertainty becomes unrewarding over time. By re-framing goals to be habit-focused, the ‘achievement’ is in actually completing the task, rather than the uncertain outcome itself, and thereby should lead to a sense of accomplishment each time it’s completed.
Consider, for example, the age-old New Year’s resolution of losing weight. You might even go a step further and make this a SMART goal by making it measurable and setting a timeframe in which you’d like to lose said number of kilos. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with wanting to work off all of the Christmas pie you’ve indulged in, you might find that focusing just on the numbers is uninspiring after the first few gym sessions.
The alternative is to focus on the habit of maintaining an exercise routine and a healthy diet. I’d break this up into two habit-based goals as below:
- Complete three high-intensity interval training workouts per week.
- Stick to my meal plan for six out of seven days per week (the one day off lets me indulge in a dinner out or a takeaway).
By sticking to the above, I know intrinsically that I will be healthier, feel better and will likely lose the Christmas kilos whilst not putting immense pressure on myself every time I go near a scale.
In addition to the above, I’ll be setting some other professional and wellbeing-based goals for myself for 2022, these are:
3. Write at least one article on Medium per week (note this goal isn’t about the number of views, earnings or new subscribers, it’s just about producing good quality content consistently).
4. Track my spending against my budget every month (instead of setting a budget and ignoring it most months!).
5. Spend 30 minutes each week decluttering my belongings and selling unwanted items (a great way to make some extra cash and reduce waste).
If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the past couple of years, it’s that my wellbeing is as important, if not more important than my achievements. Gone are the days where I’ll be sacrificing sleep, and embracing stress and anxiety as necessary to achieve my goals. This is why I am conscious to include wellbeing-based goals, framed as habits, alongside my professional goals and attribute equal significance to these. Here’s to a productive, happy and safe 2022.
