A new year is bearing down on us, and now’s the time of year when a lot of people set their resolutions. Have you set a New Year’s resolution? If so, what is it?
For a lot of people, a New Year’s Resolution is vague, ambiguous and not specifically attainable. “Resolutions” often go something like, “I’ll lose weight,” “I’ll get in shape,” or “I’ll be a better person.” Those are noble, beautiful resolutions… but they’re not really attainable. They’re just loosely formed ideas with no real objective and no criteria for success.
When do you acknowledge, for example, that you lost weight? When you lose one pound? When you can wear a size smaller in jeans? Weight fluctuates daily based on a number of factors, and clothing sizes can vary, too; even clothes from the same line and label can vary by several inches depending on where the garments were made.
An ambiguous statement isn’t a goal, and it sets you up for disappointment. For many people, they also lay the foundation for debilitating setbacks that push the real goal even further out of (perceived) reach.
What you need is a goal, not a resolution.
In the business world, managers push employees to set SMART goals. If you’ve been out of the corporate world for a while or aren’t familiar with this type of objective setting, the SMART acronym stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely
I won’t go into the breakdown of each letter in this blog post, but a quick Google search can give you more specifics than you ever wanted to know for each item. That’s not to say it isn’t important, just that volumes have already been written on how SMART goals work.
If you want to achieve your New Year’s Resolution, despite the lack of explanation in this post, it will benefit you to set SMART goals instead of ambiguous resolutions.
For example, let’s say you want to lose weight. Let go of the “Resolution” to “lose weight” and set a SMART goal for yourself: “I will lose 15 pounds by February 15.” Now you have something to work toward.
- This goal is Specific; there is no ambiguity whatsoever in losing 15 pounds.
- This goal is Measurable; it’s straightforward to step on the scale on January 1, record your beginning weight, then step on again and record your end weight.
- This goal is Achievable; People lose 15 pounds all the time, it has been done and can be done… and if other people can do it, you absolutely can too.
- This goal is Realistic; 15 pounds in 46 days is only one pound every three days. That means that you need a calorie deficit of 1,000 calories daily for six weeks. Reducing your calorie intake, adding a 1,000-calorie workout to your daily routine, or some combination thereof and you’re set.
- This goal is also Timely; you have a pre-determined deadline by which you’ll lose the weight.
So, have you already set a New Year’s Resolution? If you have, great! You have something you can turn into a goal. If you haven’t, is now the time to start goal-setting for the coming year?
