If your New Year resolutions are usually forgotten by the end of January, then maybe you need to focus on setting smarter goals. Sean McLoughney has some practical tips.
The Christmas lights are already brightly shining and the festivities will soon be in full swing. The next few weeks will be spent over-eating, over-spending, over-indulging and then as the guilt sets in many people will take some time to reflect on the changes that they need or want to make. Over the Christmas holidays the desire to improve one’s life intensifies and as another year dawns the reliable New Year resolutions will be rolled out. The airwaves will light up with people phoning radio stations with promises to lose weight, climb far away mountains or learn to play the drums. By mid-January most New Year resolutions will fail or be pushed to one side as we settle into another year of routine activities.
People who find it difficult to accomplish goals (and New Year resolutions) – whether personal or business – usually settle for something less. Nelson Mandela puts it: “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Here are some steps that you can take to ensure that your goals and New Year resolutions don’t get derailed within a few weeks.
Step 1: Make a decision
It is important that you make the decision to achieve the goal and are not pressurised into it by your friends or peers. A major stumbling block to successfully completing goals is attitude. The wrong attitude will inhibit your progress towards implementing your vision for the future. To be successful you must have a positive mindset and a belief that you can achieve your goal. You must be prepared to put in the hard yards and break free from your comfort zone. Maintain a positive attitude at all times.
“We cannot control life’s difficult moments but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds. Too often we try to choose and control things we cannot. Too seldom we choose to control what we can – our attitude.” John Maxwell
Step 2: Clarify
A simple but effective way to bring clarity to your goal is to write it out using the SMARTER Way Goal Setting System™. This will ensure that you have a clear understanding of what you would like to achieve and the motivation to ensure that you achieve it. The SMARTER Way Goal Setting System™ can be used as follows:
Specific
People often set New Year resolutions, personal and career goals that are simply too vague. I want a career change, I want an exciting new hobby or I want to improve my social life are goals that are hard to determine whether you have achieved them or not. There are no goalposts and as a result how do you know if you have scored? However, if you reword your goal to ‘I want to restore a 1970s sports car’ you now have a specific goal. Writing a clear goal concentrates the mind on focusing on the result.
Measurable
Winning goals need to have some form of measurement as there is an old saying ‘what gets measured gets done’. Incorporating a clear measurement in your written goal will make it easier to see it you have hit your intended target. The measure should be linked to the specific part of your goal.
Achievable
Your goals should stretch you but not break you. The success or failure of your goals can often be determined by the fact that the goal was unrealistic in the first place. Naïve goals set yourself up to fail and as a result you run the risk of giving up before you even start. Goals should be about improving yourself and having fun doing it.
Relevant
Avoid setting goals that aren’t relevant or important to you. Do not waste time on goals that will not move you towards your long-term objective. The relevance of your goal should be aligned to your motivation and inspiration to improve.
Time Frame
There is nothing like an impending deadline to concentrate the mind and body. People think and talk about how they wished that they had more time to spend doing what they would like to do rather than the things that are imposed on them. They also bemoan the fact that there aren’t enough hours in the day to allow them achieve their goals.
Most people never take action to implement their goal because they don’t set deadlines. As a result there is never a sense of urgency. Procrastination takes root. Decide on your starting date and then calculate your finish date.
Exciting
Make sure your goal is full of Es; excitement, enthusiasm, energy and enjoyment. Write out why your goal is exciting, so exciting that failure is not an option. Bring passion to your desire to achieve your goal. Energise those around you with your enthusiasm for success. Ensure that your colleagues and friends are also excited about your New Year resolutions. Make sure your energy levels are high as this will drive you forward.
Reward
What will you achieve as a result of completing this goal? List the many benefits that achieving your goal will bring you as this list will improve your motivation to be successful. Add incentives to your journey so that you can maintain your drive throughout your progress to peak performance. Achieving challenging goals isn’t easy. It requires dedication, perseverance and a real desire to improve. If your reward is big enough you will ensure that there are no barriers that will prevent you from being successful.
While the SMART part of your goal gives you a clear understanding of what you have to do and the timeframe within which you will achieve your goal, the final ER part is the motivational drive behind your goal. It gives you the reason why you
want to achieve your goal. The bigger the ER the bigger the chances are that you will be successful.
Step 3: The 24-hour rule
It is imperative that you take action as quickly as possible; otherwise you run the risk that your enthusiasm for your goal will wane. Within 24 hours of deciding on your goal you must take some action. Complete the smallest task; it doesn’t matter as long as you do something that gets you started. Tom Peters and Robert Waterman after examining 40 of Fortune’s top 500 performing companies concluded in their book In Search of Excellence that that there are 8 common themes responsible for their success. The first theme was ‘a bias for action’ where organisation made active decisions.
They got on with the process of doing things. Successful companies took action as quickly as possible and then
analysed the results and made changes if necessary.
Finally...
This year make your New Year Resolution something to be proud of; think big and positively. In ‘Golf is Not a Game of Perfect’ Dr Bob Rotella, talks about achieving great thing through thinking big. He says: “A person with great dreams can achieve great things. A person with small dreams, or a person without the confidence to pursue his or her dreams, has consigned himself or herself to a life of frustration and mediocrity.”
Sean McLoughney is author of Slave to the Clock, Master of Time and is the presenter for ICAI’s Diploma in Managing People. The next session for this Diploma is March 2009. Published by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, Slave to the Clock, Master of Time will transform the way you use your time. Available online at
www.icai.ie/publications/listing.cfm