92% of New Year’s resolutions fail. How to join the club of 8%?
New Year’s Resolutions. A topic that gets remembered during 2 months of the year. Literally:
Each year it’s the same story: we make big plans, dreams, and promises, but according to studies, 80% of us quit by February and 92% by December, so we’re left with 8% of overachievers. Oh, that’s an “encouraging” statistic!
But let’s forget statistics. The past doesn’t define you. That’s one thing I learned after I started learning about habits. You can change and achieve your goals if you use the right strategy.
What’s the “right strategy” you might ask?
Well, that’s what I will try to lay out in this piece.
A boring lead up to really useful stuff
It’s something magical about the end of the year. We reflect, look back, and get excited about the future a lot more often than we would normally do.
My theory is, that it’s a result of the fact that nobody really expects you to do anything productive during that week between Christmas and New Years. And that’s a liberating feeling after 50 weeks of being constantly ON. Finally, we can spend some time thinking about what we REALLY want from our lives. Of course — starting next year.
What’s interesting, that each year, the goals are actually quite similar. We want to eat healthier, exercise more, save more money, get our sh*t together in the self-care department. Reading is good… I should read more.
What do we get from this? Surprise surprise: we want to improve our lives!
But before I go into this BIG strategy how-to-achieve-your-goals-103%-of-the-time-or-money-back, I know some of you will appreciate looking at it from a point of “what mistake am I making” rather than “what should I do”.
So here are 4 reasons why we fail to achieve our New Year’s resolutions:
- our goal is too big
- our goal is not fun, it’s a chore
- our goal is not planned out realistically
- we assume that the level of motivation and willpower to change we have on the 1st of January will be the same throughout the year.
In other words, we shoot for the stars and land on our as*es. We have most amazing intentions, but horrible strategies on how to get it actually done.
THE STRATEGY
So what can you do to make 2019 different?
Well, I can’t promise this will be the magic bullet to all the struggles, but here is the formula I will use myself when setting goals for next year:
Specific + achievable + not hating + plan B = being proud of myself in December
Make it specific.
What can be measured — can be improved. “Eating more healthy” is a feeling based goal which makes it really hard to measure. You could say that the apple you ate last month is already mission accomplished, but you know it’s not.
Instead, come up with a very concrete goal, such as — I will have 1 fruit a day. Or, if your goal is to exercise more you could say — I will go jogging 3 times a week. Or even more specific: I will go for a 10 min morning run 3 times a week.
You will end up with a really specific goal that will be a lot easier to track and visualize. It will also help you to realize whether your goal is realistic, e.g. maybe eating 365 fruits next year is not something you can do?
Which brings me to the next point:
Make it achievable.
When it comes down to achieving goals, “Go hard or go home” strategy rarely works. You go all in, you’re pumped, but a few weeks later something stressful happens at work or family and you delay working on your goal.
“I’ll come back to it as soon as I can” — your wishful thinking says to you.
But you know how it goes from there: you delay once, delay twice and the momentum is lost. I call it “death zone of goals” and it’s a very hard place to come back from.
At the end of this article, I share one strategy you could use to get out of the “death zone of goals”, given that you get there. For now, let’s focus on how to minimize your chances of getting into this dark cold place altogether.
You do that by making your goals ridiculously tiny.
Instead of saying — “I will run a marathon this year”, change it to — “I will run 5 miles a week”. Or 3 miles. or 1 mile.
Now, I know what you’re thinking — “I want to run a marathon, not 1 mile per week.”
And that’s great if you are already training regularly and did a couple of half-marathons last year. Aiming to run a marathon is a natural step forward. But if you’re going from sitting all day in the office to running a marathon, your risk of becoming a 92% statistic has just increased 20 times.
Don’t get me wrong — it’s nothing wrong with big goals. Dream big. But be realistic on your strategy to getting there. Pave your way to big dreams with small wins and you’ll set your mindset for success. Get into the habit of achieving goals, even if small.
If you don’t want to settle for smaller goals, you could also split the year in quarters and start first quarter with something simple and easy, then increase intensity in the next quarter and so on.
Simply avoid making a mistake of planning to run before you learn to walk.
Do something you don’t hate
It’s simple — you’re more likely to take action if it’s fun. For example — you know what is probably the best fitness app in the world? Pokemon GO. It got millions of people to pick up their butts and take a walk outside. Regularly. Because they were playing, not working out.
Use this strategy for your goal, too. Don’t start the goal with the mentality of it being a punishment — “oh no, I hate reading, but I have to hit my ‘24 books per year’ goal”, or “oh, I hate running, but I want to run a marathon…’ etc. etc. Suffering and pain albeit popular belief — will not get you to reach your New Year’s Resolution.
Instead, think how you can make it something you actually look forward to doing. Or at least you’re neutral about. A good example could be — if you want to get moving more often, consider taking a 10 min stroll outside, after your lunch listening to your favorite band? Fresh air is always great and you will also get that extra time-off before moving on with the 2nd part of your day.
Have a Plan B.
No matter how well you plan, things will never go as planned.
You planned to have a morning jog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but 2 months in and your boss set up a really early meeting on Wednesdays. There is no way you can make it to the office in time if you go for a run.
That’s ok, that’s when you turn to your Plan B — cutting the goal in half. Don’t stress about it and simply course correct. Important is that you’re still in the race for becoming 8% of people who achieved their resolution by the end of the year.
It also works well if the factors are more internal. You overestimated yourself and reading 2 books per month just doesn’t work for you? Cut it in half and make it 1 book a month. Still not working out? Cut it in half again. Course correct and remain in the race. Keep your momentum going.
And voilà! You did it.
Extra tools to make you succeed
There are 3 extra tools you can add coming from the habit formation science.
Accountability buddy or tribe
You know this one already. Get someone who will either have the same goal as you or someone, who will check in and nag you regularly until you actually do it.
The former usually works better, because the motivation is both-sided. You can push and motivate each other to show up and do it. Groups of people work even better because the flame of motivation is kept by a larger group of people. That’s why CrossFit or other types of group training works really well!
Tracking
Visualizing progress is a really powerful tool. And there are a number of ways how you can do that.
You can print out the calendar or use a habit tracking app to mark ‘X’ on the days that you did what you wanted to do.
Alternatively, you can count down the number of times/days left until your goal is completed. So if your goal is 365 fruits — each time you have one, you mark the number down.
Strategy for skipping
Extra! Extra! Life is not perfect!
You will get sick, get bored or demotivated. Life is not perfect and you will inevitably skip days on your journey. That’s why you have a plan B in your success formula.
However, cutting a goal in half is not always the best strategy, especially if the disturbances are temporary. Instead, set yourself these two guidelines:
- Never skip twice. If you skip once, no biggie. Get back on track next time, nobody died.
- If you do end up skipping twice or more, get back to it as soon as possible. There is no shame in coming back to the gym after 4 months of break. Forget about shame. Get back on track on focus on the day ahead. You’re making progress.
It’s a wrap.
It’s just one of many ways how to look at it. In won’t work for 100% of people. But it helped me personally to be patient with my progress.
One more thing.
If your goal for 2019 is to have a better morning routine, I got something for you. We, at 21 Day Hero, have just launched an “8-week Morning Upgrade” program, focused on helping you to build a morning ritual consisting of having a glass of water, quick 5 min morning exercise, 5 min mindfulness practice and 5 min of journaling.
It all adds up to a 15 min power routine, which we’ll get to gradually over the course of 8 weeks, to assure a seamless integration into your schedule. We have a limited amount of “seats” available for these first batches, so apply early and secure your spot now.
YOU GOT THIS!
Note: this is my second article in my journey of building a writing habit. First one is here. I‘m enjoying it more than I thought I will. I am a total beginner so I delete-and-rewrite 4–5 times until I get to the point where I am happy with what I’m publishing. So far, I wrote 8 out of 10 days, a total of 5000+ words.
