Make your resolutions stick
A another year, another set of resolutions? If you’re like most people, you’ll be excited about your new year’s resolutions until about now. Then you get back into the usual routine, life happens, and before you know it, you find yourself making resolutions for the new year.
How do you make your resolutions stick?
The best solution I’ve found is something I read a couple of years ago on Jacqueline Carly’s blog (she’s refocused her blog on something completely different so the original links don’t work) Its called 12in12. You plan to commit to doing a new resolution everyday for 30 days (1 month). At the end of the month, you decide if you want to continue doing it further. At the end of the month, you also commit to doing another resolution for 30 days. At the end of the year (12 months), you would have tested out 12 new resolutions — hence the name 12in12.
It’s important that you do your resolution every day for the entire 30 days. It doesn’t matter what your resolution is — give up sugar, exercise, write a blog, read for 15min, etc — what is important is that you do it every day. 30 days is long enough that you get to test if you really like doing it. You’re committing to doing it for 30 days and not your entire life, so it’s not intimidating. And you’re trying it out before doing it long-term which is a practical approach. At the same time, 30 days is short enough that if you don’t like it, or have a hard time doing it for even 30 days, you call it quits and move on.
I used this book to start reading every night for at least 15min, gave up sugar in coffee and so on.
Matt Cutt’s TED talk is along the same lines.
Chris Brogan refers to the 12in12 program in his Google+ post. Note: the links in the post to Jacqueline Carly’s blog don’t work anymore, however, you can read the comments for more color. You can also check out Chris’ 3 words for 2014 — another useful approach to plan your year.
Did it work for you? Drop me a note and let me know.
