A System for Effective New Years Resolutions, or How I Became a Software Developer

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

This time last year, I had a different job, a different salary, and a different lifestyle. I think by now we’re all familiar with the trope of committing to make a change on January 1st, only to have forgotten about that commitment completely by January 30th. However, I think the idea of resolutions in general is a great and very useful one. I would credit my own resolutions with every part of the changes I’ve been able to make in my own life. However, there are some big flaws to the way most people do resolutions that I think doom them to failure to the start. So here I’m going to share my approach, and I hope you find it as useful as I did.

Here’s why I believe yearly resolutions often fail:

1. We make too many resolutions.
2. We give ourselves all year to do these things.
3. The changes we commit to are too broad, things like ‘work out more’ ‘eat better’ are both difficult to measure, and have no real way to say definitively when they are complete.

Warren Buffet once claimed that the secret to life goals is to have only a few of them at a time, and to dedicate yourself wholly to completing them one after another. At least I’m reasonably certain he did, this is like 4th hand information, but just go with me on this.

What I did last year was this, on January 1st, I wrote three goals, they weren’t changes to myself — because that’s too broad and it’s very difficult to make that kind of conscious change to ourselves — we grow by having experiences, the changes are kind of coincidental.

The structure of your goals is important. In my case, my three goals were about completing various online courses. it’s important that you choose a goal with an ending. Don’t say to yourself ‘I’m going to work out more’ say to yourself ‘I’m going to work out 30 times over the next 3 months’

These shouldn’t be enormous, life changing things. The changes will come naturally through the pursuit of smaller goals. Now give yourself LESS time to do them. I gave myself 3 months to finish three goals. and I’ve stuck with this structure. Quarterly goals, not Annual resolutions. if one of your goals is to build a daily habit, perhaps go even smaller, make weekly resolutions and review them on Sunday.

When choosing your goals, try to be realistic about what you can get done in just a few months. choose SMART goals:

• Specific — maybe your goal is to read more, or run more often, — but these suffer from being too general, Instead, perhaps make goals to read 3 books from a reading list, or compete in a half-marathon (sounds chilly in February but whatever floats your boat) — this way, everything you do along the way will have purpose and payoff.
• Measurable — make sure that your goals are things that you can actually say you achieved. It’s not about being measurable in relation to where you are today. It’s about having goals where you can say ‘that is over, I’ve done it now’. You can’t really say these things about general, life improvement resolutions. If you have big life changes you want to make, then think of the smaller achievements along the way, and make those achievements your goals
• Achievable —So we’ve talked about choosing achievements, but now you need to think hard about what you can actually do. Be honest with yourself here, and don’t be afraid of challenging yourself. But take a good long look at what is possible (or plausible) and choose goals that you can succeed at if you work at them.
• Relevant — For this one, think about what is happening in your life. Prioritize the goals that are more relevant to either what WILL be happening, or what you WANT to be happening. If the goal is neither convenient, nor part of your deeper desires, you’re going to let it fall by the wayside.
• Time-bound — don’t give yourself forever to do something, at most I let a goal take 3 months before I consider abandoning it, but In general I know within a couple of weeks whether or not I’m going to complete it.

I’m also going to recommend that, where possible, do your goals sequentially let one build on top of another. You’ll grow in a deep and specific way if your goals complement each other towards a larger change.

Now when you finish a goal, you’ll have learned something, so either at the end of a quarter, or at the end of a goal, reflect a bit, and decide if you’d like to do more of that type of thing. Having a recap and analysis before setting new goals is critical.

Finally, give yourself room to recover. If you stall out on a goal, or if you get distracted by all the details that life can throw at you, just remember that this is not failure. Then take a look at the situation and either decide to keep going, or pick new goals.

I’ll be honest, I don’t follow these rules perfectly, but wherever I stray, that’s consistently when I don’t finish a goal. I typically finish 2/3 goals each quarter, which has been enough for an enormous life change. I keep a trello board open where I keep a huge list of goals for the future to avoid getting distracted in the present. and whenever I’m not earning rent, or spending a bit of time with loved ones, I’m grinding, bit by bit, toward one of my goals.

I hope you find this bit of advice useful in the coming year.