“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
Mark Twain
Making The Top Ten
A new year is approaching, along with the thoughts of what this year will bring. The possibilities are endless. Will this year be the year you make your million dollars, or get rid of those annoying 10 pounds around your waistline?
Judging from last year, there are probably things you want to do differently to make this your best year yet. Only you can make that determination. When you start piecing together your hopes for the new year, you resolve to do something to make it better.
Some people take this process very seriously by putting introspection and thoughtful planning into formulating their New Year's resolutions.
Why 90 Percent Fail
In my post entitled "5 Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail", I mentioned that only half the people make New Year's Resolutions, of which 90% never follow through. Most of those begin in January and are dead by February.
There are many reasons the 90% fail, but for the other 10% who really want to give it a go, there are landmines to avoid that will make achieving your resolution a strong reality.
The article highlights these 5 Reasons Why New Year's Resolutions Fail:
Begin With The End In Mind
For the 10% of people who want to accomplish their resolution for their best year yet, the following is a strategy that will make your vision a reality.
Begin with the end in mind is what you want to do. Look at your resolution as if you've already accomplished it.
Make a note of what that looks like, how you feel, what will you gain, how will you be different than you are today. It is like celebrating your accomplishment even before you realize it.
Really internalize this process in your mind. You may even want to write it down on paper, or even create a vision board to make it more tangible.
Whatever you do make sure that you are clear about what it is you want.
Divide by 365
This next step may surprise you, but as the title of this post suggests, make your clearly stated resolution on January 1, and break it on January 2nd.
In other words, develop a clear vision of what you what to accomplish in the next year, then break it. Meaning, break your vision down into easily manageable chunks.
To do this, take the total effort it will take to accomplish your vision and divide it by 365. This will equal the amount of effort you will have to expend each day to accomplish your goal in one year.
For example, if you want to save $10,000.00 next year, you would have to save approximately $27.40 per day to reach your goal. This seems much more manageable.
Breaking your resolution into daily goals makes it easier to stay engaged accomplishing something everyday.
Target The Daily Goal
The key to this strategy is to target a daily goal. Breaking activities into daily goals keeps you from getting overwhelmed thinking about all the effort it will take to meet the big picture.
Once you take the big picture out of sight and replace it with a small daily goal, the feeling of being overwhelmed simply goes away. Your destination becomes doable.
The target now becomes the daily goal. Challenge yourself to do something every day to get you to your final destination over a period of 365 days. Managing your day is the focal point.
If you can manage your day, you can accomplish your resolution little my little. Now, that seems a lot easier to handle.
Track Back Checkup
Just to make sure you are keeping pace, it will be great to put a tracking mechanism in place to double check your efforts.
You may want to put some type of weekly checkup in place, where you review your accomplishments for that week to ensure you're moving in the right direction.
Tracking your progress can be done with a calendar, or creating your own tracking spreadsheet. This tracking process helps you see what it looks like as your accomplishments begin to mount.
It is exciting to see what you are actually capable of doing with just a small bit of daily effort.
Managing The Delta
Of course, no great plan unfolds without some changes along the way. Change is one of those inescapable realities that we have to deal with everyday.
So as you move along your journey, you may find that you need to make some changes. Those changes are more easily managed using the daily goals tracking process. You can incorporate those changes on a daily basis to make your transitions easier.
Change is just a necessary part of the process of getting to any destination.
Join the 10%
Making your New Year's resolution and breaking it could be the way to join the 10% who actually accomplish what they set out to do.
Managing a daily goal is a lot easier than chewing the yearly goal in one bite.
By this time next year, I want to be jumping for joy that you managed to get everything you wanted for the year.
Thank You
This will help me develop and more importantly manage the goals I set. This can be applied not only for a New Years’ resolution but for any goal at any time. Thanks for another post that helps me look at things differently.
Hello, just wanted to mention, I loved this blog post.