4 Tips for Setting Resolutions that Stick (in 2022)
Anyone can set resolutions. Keeping them is the hard part.
Who doesn’t love the clean slate of a new year? It’s an opportunity to reflect on how your year has gone and the chance to start fresh. Whether you want to lose weight or write a book, cook more, or invent time travel, we’ll cover all the tools you need to stay on track with your 2022 New Year’s resolutions! (Though admittedly, that last one might be tough.)
Follow Along with Your Rocketbook Panda Planner: the Rocketbook Panda Planner has an entire section dedicated to brainstorming resolutions and goal planning, so we’ll be using that as a guide for this blog. But these tips can be used by anyone with any planner, like the Everyday Planner!
Step 1: Brainstorm
Before making a year-long commitment to what your resolutions will be in 2022, start with a brainstorming session. Write down what you want your life to look like in terms of your relationships, career, health, and finances.
The key here is that you’re honest with yourself about what you want to get out of the. next 365 days.
Read over your newly brainstormed list and prioritize them into the 3 most important New Year’s resolutions you want to go after. Studies have shown the more a goal means to you, the more likely you are to achieve it. Use the pages in the Rocketbook Panda Planner to verbalize your motivation and visualize the benefits that will come from a successful year of resolutions. Plainly, if you don’t care about your resolution, you won’t keep them.
What if you want to adjust your new year’s resolutions? No problem. With the Rocketbook Panda Planner you can erase your pages and start anew. It’s never to late to start over. In fact, we’re still setting some of our 2021 resolutions.
- Brainstorm your hopes for 2022
- Prioritize your goals
- Put care into your resolutions
Step 2: Write Your Resolutions Somewhere Obvious
Once you’ve chosen your resolutions for the upcoming year, the next step is to keep them. The unfortunate fact is that 80% of new year’s resolutions are abandoned by February. That’s why it’s so important to write down your resolutions — Neuroscience has shown that writing your goals down helps you achieve them! If you need help verbalizing your goals in an effective way, check out our Goal Setting Guide.
You’ve already written down your resolutions in Step 1, but make sure you see them every day. One option is to scan your Rocketbook Panda Planner and set your goal pages as the background to your computer or phone. You’ll be forced to look at your resolutions which will be a constant reminder that you need to hit the gym, apply for jobs, or buy a part for your time machine (we still don’t support that last idea, by the way).
What if you’re best motivated by social pressure? No problem. Scan your Rocketbook Panda Planner and send your resolutions to a friend. Giving them access to your goals makes you accountable and adds some outside pressure to stay on track.
- Write down your resolutions concisely
- Keep your resolutions in a spot you see everyday
Step 3: Make an Action Plan
Long term resolutions can be intimidating and are easy to put off. To stave off these common missteps, make a short term, step-by-step plan.
Start by choosing specific metrics by which to measure your success. If your goal is to lose weight, pick a specific number, like 180lbs. If your goal is to a futuristic note-taker, pick how many Rocketbook notebooks you want to own, like 4. Wink, wink.
Okay, after you’ve set your measures of success, Create a roadmap that will act as the path to your resolution success. Breaking down big goal into smaller, actionable steps help turn overwhelming dreams into an achievable reality.
A step-by-step approach also has the added benefit of giving you quick wins. You’re more likely to feel great about your progress if you can check off “run 4 times” each week, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the goal to “run a marathon”. Steps are easier to follow — it’s why we’ve broken down this guide into 4 steps instead of making it one giant paragraph.
What if I want a planner with less structure, and more freedom? No problem. The Rocketbook Everyday Planner is an alternative solution to new year success. Its pages have a minimalist design, but are still reusable, undated, and work with the Rocketbook app.
- Break down your resolution
- Choose a measure of success
- Use momentum to your advantage
Step 4: Track Progress
When progress is slow and steady, it’s easy to forget where you started and how much you’ve improved since the beginning.
Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back by tracking your progress. Record how many push-ups you do each week or how much time you spent practicing guitar…whatever your resolution, it’s fun to look back at weeks and months of progress to see how far you’ve come!
With your Rocketbook notebook at your side, it’s easy to pick a method for tracking your New Year’s resolutions! No matter how you decide to monitor yourself, commit to scanning your progress page each week as a reminder an extra reminder to work on your resolution. No go out and get resolving! Or is it resoluting? Resolution-ating? You know what we mean.
What if I don’t know how to track my progress? No problem. The Rocketbook Panda Planner’s monthly template has a very simple habit tracking system. Simply check off the “H” for each day you work towards your resolution.
- Pick a method to track your progress
- Check-in regularly
Everyone sets new year’s resolutions, but most people don’t keep them. Simply by reading this guide, you’ve set yourself up for success, for you now know the common points of failure and how to avoid them. Additionally, paired with your Rocketbook Panda Planner, you’re an unstoppable force that can easily brainstorm, write, plan, and track your resolutions.
Still having trouble achieving your goals? Find out the #1 reason you aren’t achieving your goals.
Make sure your setting resolutions that stick by first learning your goal-setting style with this quiz.
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About the Author: Beth Cubbage is a consulting manager at a software company and mom to two girls. Beth has a PhD in Economics, which she uses to design various incentive programs for her kids’ bedtime (still working on that). When she isn’t wrangling work projects or family activities, Beth writes about career, productivity and parenting at ParentLightly.com. In her (very) spare time, Beth enjoys mountain biking, martial arts and obstacle races. Beth’s Rocketbook Core (formerly Everlast) helps keep her sane. [Note: This blog post is an adaptation of Beth’s original blog post, which can be found here.]
