New years goals and resolutions
New years is a really great time to reflect on the past year and set new goals, but often people find resolutions ineffective (and sort of cheesy). I plan to do use my blog to reflect on my resolutions and goals each month, then set new ones for the next month.
Tips for setting effective New Year’s resolutions
Set specific, measurable goals. This might seem obvious, but I still see so many people with really vague, ill defined goals. Make sure the goals you set are specific, clearly outlined and measurable in some way. A good goal is written so that it’s clear what you need to do to accomplish it (and when). For example, make a goal to cook 2-3 dinners at home each week rather than to just “cook dinner at home more.”
Make challenging but realistic goals. A lot of my friends are making goals like “stop drinking” or “no fast food”. These are well intentioned, but they aren’t sustainable for most people. Are you really willing to completely give something up? For the rest of your life? More realistic ideas might be along the lines of “fast food once a month” or “drinking 1-2x per week”. The point of a resolution is to establish a good habit that you can keep well past the one-year mark. Excessively restrictive goals are not sustainable.
Set a deadline. If your resolution is related to a specific goal, like “lose X lbs” or “save $ for a vacation”, make sure that there’s a time limit. It’s important for those goals to be time bound, in my opinion these types of goals are better as 1-month to 3-month goals rather than yearly resolutions (see #4).
Setting monthly goals rather than yearly resolutions. Many people start the year with 12-15 resolutions, a long list like that is pretty overwhelming and hard to keep up with. Instead, try sitting down to write a few key goals down at the beginning of each month. This allows you to reflect and refocus at the end of each 4 week period. Your commitments and priorities will likely change throughout the year, it’s good to give yourself time to update resolutions and goals accordingly. If your goal is to form a habit, 3-4 weeks is a great time frame to develop a habit that will stick.
Following are my resolutions, let me know yours so we can keep each other accountable! If you need tools to help yourself keep up with everything, let me know!
My Year-long resolutions:
Environment - begin to use reusable mugs whenever I get a drink to go.
Actions: buy mug and pack it daily in my work backpack. Only get paper cups when coffees are a spontaneous/social thing - never when they’re a part of my planned morning commute/routine.
Environment - begin to compost regularly at home.
Actions: order new compost bin from Recology (mine was stolen) and an under sink compost container.
Finance - get better credit.
Pay down student loans - set monthly auto debit to a higher amount. Ensure there aren’t other things bringing down credit.
My January goals:
Health - drink at least 2L of water per day
Health - take multivitamins and fish oil daily
Finance - outline a monthly budget, decide on a more structured budgeting strategy