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How to Achieve Your Ambitions in the New Year
Here’s a system for turning New Year’s energy into well-defined goals that you’ll actually reach—and how to exceed your own expectations along the way.
I never really liked New Year’s resolutions. They always seemed like a half-assed way to make some vague commitment on an arbitrary date.
But now, even though I still think the date is pretty arbitrary, I believe that if done right, resolutions (or what we will turn them into here) can be a powerful way to both reflect and prioritize, as well as make some firm commitments to future achievement.
The key here is the “if done right” part.
Over the past year I, along with my good friend YuYang Huang, experimented with a different way of approaching New Year’s resolutions. And it turned out to be a tremendous success.
At the beginning of the year, Yang and I shared our respective lists of goals with each other. Then over the year, at the end of every month, we had a check-in call to report on our progress and to help each other stay on track.
The two core features that made this approach so successful were well-defined quantifiable goals and social accountability.