The gist: Learn why so many of us don't meet the goals we set (hint: they're probably just not good goals), and what you can do instead.
It’s basically considered common knowledge at this point: New Year's resolutions “don't work.”
We've all heard the statistics about how few people “meet” their resolutions, how many people quickly forget about their resolutions entirely, and how much less crowded gyms get in February.
The conclusion a lot of people come to after learning all that?
That resolutions and goals just flat-out don’t work, and aren’t worth setting.
But that's an oversimplification.
It’s not that resolutions themselves don’t work, just that the most common approach to them, and goals in general, doesn’t.
And like with so many things we talk about at Work Brighter, the problem with the approach is how Hustle Culture has influenced it.
So let's look at why typical resolution and goal-setting approaches are set up to fail, and how to make them more achievable.
Why most New Year’s resolutions don’t “stick”
They come from the wrong place
A lot of us approach resolutions, goals, and behavior change thinking about who we think we should be, instead of who we actually are (as exemplified by the “New Year, New Me” mindset), or even who we actually want to be.
Instead of thinking about who we are and what we want, we think about things like traditional markers of success or how to make the other people in our lives happy.
If your goals are totally disconnected from what you actually want, there’s no real reason for you to pursue it.
The end result won’t be exciting enough to motivate you, you won’t enjoy the process enough to keep going, and you won’t feel genuinely proud or accomplished if you actually see it through to the end.
It’s way too easy to abandon and totally forget about these kinds of goals because you don’t actually care about them.
They're too vague to be helpful
Goals like "save more money" or "improve my career" sound nice, but they don't actually tell you anything useful.
Like, what would improving your career actually look like? What improvements do you want to make?
It could be anything from getting better at certain things in your current job, to getting promoted, to starting a new, different career completely.
Without getting clear on what you actually want, it’s impossible to figure out what you need to do to get it.
They're too big to be realistic
Another common problem is that most of us set unrealistically big goals.
So much New Year’s resolution messaging, and cultural messaging in general, is focused on “thinking big”, "leaping out of your comfort zone," and “going big or going home” (as if that’s not where we’d rather be anyway).
This encourages us to set goals and make plans that are wildly unrealistic for the time frames or life circumstances we plan them around.
We don’t realize that we’ve set resolutions that are literally impossible to realistically keep, and then blame ourselves when we don’t keep them.
We get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking
When we fall into all-or-nothing thinking about our goals, anything short of perfection is a complete and total failure and reflects horribly on us as a person.
Even if we get 75% of the way to where we wanted to be—hell, even if we get 90% of the way—we act like we made no progress and achieved nothing.
And when you’ve put in a bunch of effort but don’t see it resulting in any progress, there’s basically no motivation to keep putting in effort and keep trying to meet the goal.
Which is an understandable feeling, but all too often based on a warped view of our progress so far.
We just “set goals” and nothing else
For a lot of people who set goals, that’s all they do.
Even if they technically know it takes more than that to actually achieve them, they don’t put much thought into those other things.
But setting a goal is just the first (and easiest) step in a larger process that includes things like strategy, planning, and troubleshooting.
Setting the goal clarifies where you’re trying to go, but gives no information about how you’re going to get there. And without a clear roadmap for navigation, it’s going to be hard to get there.
We don't check-in and adjust
Finally, not many people take time to pause and check in on how attempts at our goals are going. Once we set the goal and start taking action, we tend to just keep going and going until we run out of steam, never to think about the goal again.
This means we miss opportunities to figure out what’s working and what isn’t, use that information moving forward, and celebrate the progress we’ve already made (which can boost motivation for the future).
How to actually make progress on goals
Go beyond “set it and forget it”
The first step to achieving more of your goals is putting more strategy into them.
Like I mentioned earlier, setting goals is only the first step. Not just in the big process of achieving the goal, but also in preparing to “go after” it.
In addition to deciding on the goal, goal prep can also include…
- Breaking it down into actionable pieces like projects, tasks, habits, and routines
- Thinking about realistic timelines and milestones
- Choosing how to measure your progress
- Gathering supplies to work on the goal
…and anything else that make future efforts towards the goal easier.
Build systems and routines
Once you’ve fully planned and thought out your goals, look at the breakdown from your goal prep and think about what can be systemized or built into a routine (either an existing one or building a new routine around it).
Systems like setting up your morning routine before bed, keeping craft supplies where they’re easy to start using, or scheduling time for your goal actions can help us remember our goals and remove friction from making progress on them.
Not everything needs to be a new system or routine though, you can also think about how to incorporate new goal-related habits or tasks into routines you already have.
Create accountability for yourself
Another thing that can make it easier to keep up with your goals is accountability, or any kind of external support system. Accountability can look like anything from participating in a community, using an app, or visually tracking your progress somewhere noticeable.
Most of us need different forms of accountability for different goals, and to have multiple forms/systems working for us at once.
For example, for one goal you may find you need a group class structure plus automated tracking plus a financial incentive, whereas for another you only need a simple manual tracker.
But spending more time thinking and strategizing about your goals can help you figure out the right combination for each one.
Review your progress regularly
Finally, regularly checking in on your goals and your progress on them makes so many situations easier.
When you dedicate time to thinking about which of your efforts or strategies are working, and which aren’t, you can adjust your goals and plans for them accordingly.
For example, if you’re having trouble keeping up with a goal, you can think about why, and either adjust the goal, or adjust your approach to meeting it, accordingly. Or if a goal is going well and you’re both enjoying the process and making progress, you can think about how you can apply approaches from that goal to others that are more challenging.
Aside from reviewing and adjusting your goal plans, this time is also an opportunity to just further develop them, planning out next steps and milestones. If you have a 90-day goal and plan 2 check-ins along the way, you only need to plan or strategize one month at a time.
All this is just part of why I'm such an advocate for things like weekly and monthly resets.
Achieving goals just got easier
Most of us don’t reach the goals we set for pretty understandable reasons.
That’s good news, because once you understand why you’re not reaching a goal, you can do something about it.
And whether that’s adjusting your approach or just ditching the goal altogether, your lack of progress on it still stops weighing on you.