How to improve resolution taking?

Last week I gave some of the reasons commonly given why we fail when we take our yearly resolutions (see here). So now that we have a few ideas why we fail, here are some tips and tricks we can use to improve our chances of succeeding and actually reaching our goals and resolutions.

The important thing to remember here is that often we overload ourselves and have difficulty judging how long things actually take. The advice that is given in this case is familiar and comes up in other contexts as well but applying them takes persistence and consistency. If you get the feeling “you won’t be able to do this yet”, perhaps your goal is too far-reaching or perhaps it is too abstract.

The following tips should help so try them out and if they don’t seem to work, then try something else. Unfortunately, there is no one-solution-fits-all. There is an element of exploration and experimentation to this that needs to be done in order to find what works. That being said, it is important not to give up unless we’ve explored a few of the feasible options and if nothing here works then at least we understand better what we’re doing and can perhaps come up with techniques of our own that work. Learning new skills, changing or breaking habits and working on our physical and mental health are difficult things to do, but they are important and if it is important make sure it is important to you and that you are the one that chooses it. Remembering why we chose our goal and referring back to that when we hit the inevitable setback will help us push through it.

The following tips and tricks may help to achieve our New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Set S.M.A.R.T goals

I’ve been hearing this a lot and in many different contexts. But what does the acronym mean exactly? Interestingly only Specific and Measurable were the same across the multiple resources I looked at. The others were all described here in order to increase the chances that one resonates with you (I’m not going to go into which is right because they all make sense in different contexts):

S. = Specific: Finding the right balance is important because too vague and you can easily be overwhelmed and too specific can be too easy or too constricting. Answering the five “W” questions about your goal can help to specify it correctly (what, where, why, when and who), but keep it flexible and see if it works

M. = Measurable: This is an important one, because how do you know you are on the right track if you never take stock or re-evaluate? To make it measurable you need to make sure your goal has something that can be measured. Weight and time are easier points to keep track of, but learning skills is harder if you don’t have a clear way of measuring your improvement, but not impossible either. Drawing is a good example, by making a drawing at the start of the period and then comparing with a later drawing can show where improvement has been made and maybe what also still needs work.

A. = Achievable/Actionable/Attainable: For achievable and attainable, it means that it is not too hard nor too easy a goal to reach. It must be realistic enough to do so as well. If you are going with the actionable definition then it must be a goal that you can develop a plan and take actions to achieve. Specifying those actions is very important as will be explained later in this article.

R. = Realistic/Relevant: If you are choosing the realistic definition then just as with attainable and achievable, it is important that it is a goal that can be reached. If you choose relevant, then it is important that the goal you choose is important to you and relevant for your context and the resources you have available or can reasonably expect to get.

T. = Timely/Timed/Time-bound/Time-Based: These are all different ways of saying there should be a time component to a “good” goal. This means that you need to set yourself a realistic time-frame in order to reach your goal. If it is a continuous goal like learning a new skill then give yourself a few weeks or a month to focus on one or two concepts and then keep going on a different aspect after. Not forgetting to come back and practice once in a while to help improve earlier concepts. We seem to be pretty bad at judging how long things will take so depending on the complexity of your goal and how many steps are needed you may need to re-evaluate this point a few times.

2. Organise, plan and record

These I believe are the most important steps after setting our goals. This is the organising phase: do you have only one or two goals or multiple goals? If you do have multiple goals, which strategy will you employ not to overburden yourself? Will you list them out and start with the easiest first? Or the hardest? Or the one that has you the most motivated?

Then once your strategy is set, how will you get there? This is the planning phase: What actions or small steps can you take right now to start? What do you need? (Again, important to give it a try even if you don’t have everything you think you need, here I mean what are the minimum requirements to get you started….) What are the potential pitfalls? What are the potential set-backs? What can you do to overcome each of them? This requires some thinking and sometimes even research on your part, but it is important not to skip these steps if what you want to achieve or accomplish is important to you.

Then and probably as important is to record how well you are doing in order to evaluate if you are on your way to achieving what you want. Were you realistic with your goal? Were your steps too hard to reach? Were they too easy? What needs to be changed in order to get a better balance? This step is important to keep an eye on where you are going and remember what is important. Often, taking this step back can help keep things in perspective as when we are so focused on just one step, we can lose sight of the ultimate goal. Balancing those two visions, is difficult but learning to do so can help improve our chances of getting to our goals.

There are a lot of tools and technologies that can help us to record how well we are doing with our resolutions. I personally use a habit tracker that is like a calendar, and I will mark a “0” if I didn’t do something and a “1” if I did something. All my resolutions are stated in an “I will…” format and not an I won’t format. I find it easier to add something then subtract something. If I want to remove a bad habit I prefer replacing it with something else and not focusing on what I don’t do but rather on what I do so that it feels less like I’m denying myself and more like I’m enriching myself. Then monthly I check how well I did, and I know what I need to keep doing if I’m on the right track, what didn’t work so well and what I need to change to keep going.

I started doing this in December and I’m on my 45^th day as I’m writing this draft. I already switched out one habit that I feel I no longer need to track as it is pretty easy for me to do and I had almost 95% of the month where I accomplished it (To get the percentage if you are interested is to add all the “1” for the month, divide by the total number of days in the month and then multiply that answer by 100 to get you result in percentages.) I know that aiming for 100% is not realistic and not attainable in my case, so my goal is not to have more than four zeros in a row. Perfectionism is something to watch out for because it is generally not sustainable when we are trying to create a habit. Improving will come later and trying to do too much at once is overwhelming and discouraging and more likely that we will give up before we reach our goal. There are a lot of apps that can help including a few in game format that can be helpful for keeping track if the calendar trackers are not for you. Just try a couple of ways and see what works for you.

3. Temporal comparison

Now for this advice, a caveat is required. I’m not saying you should never compare yourself to others. This is only in the case that you compare yourself to others and have thoughts like “They are so much better, I won’t be able to catch up…” “I can’t do that…” The recommendation if that happens to you, is to compare yourself to yourself from a month ago, a year ago or another period that is relevant. If you are learning a new skill it is important to understand the basics before you try to compare yourself to others. Comparing yourself temporally can show you how much you’ve grown and help boost your confidence in yourself.

Why would you then need to compare yourself to others? It’s actually for help growing your skills. Knowing what is being done and what you like, and don’t like, can help you improve in different ways. For artists and creatives, it is almost essential to do this eventually because it will help us figure out our personal style, and help us grow as artists but if we don’t understand what makes up a style and what the artists we like are doing exactly, we won’t get any of the benefits. So the advice here is to understand the basics first and what elements make up a style and then you can look at others and how they do things to help grow and improve. (Same applies to music and other skills and even to some habits!)

4. Accountability help

Often having a partner, a group or even a financial investment in classes can help motivate us to get our money’s worth and hold us accountable. This doesn’t always work (for example gym memberships…) but the difference between a membership where you go when you want and signing up for a class that has a specific time, activity and group of people can be the difference between keeping that resolution and stopping after a month. Having people around that can encourage you, help you keep your goals realistic, help you keep your motivation going and help you evaluate how you are doing is invaluable! It’s important that it’s with people you trust and that understand what you are trying to achieve as asking the wrong people for advice can actually hinder and make you abandon your S.M.A.R.T. goals much too quickly and wreak havoc with your confidence. I’ve been lucky to have accountability help from both individuals and groups I trust. So far they have helped keep me from giving up which I would usually have by now.

5. Self-control

Because the important step of acquiring a habit requires us to be persistent, consistent and regular, self-control is really important. It is important to act even if the motivation is lacking because motivation comes with action (instead of the other way around). Self-control is necessary to push ourselves to move when we would sometimes rather do something else, or anything else, rather than keep progressing on our goals. Conversely if we are trying to break a bad habit and we need to avoid temptation then self-control is also essential. Unfortunately, research indicates that we get habituated to this self-control, which means that after a while it will get harder and harder to force ourselves to make the choice we set until we reach a point where it is too hard and we go back to our easier (for our brains) habits.

The example I read used ice cream as an example. For a month, you can resist the temptation to have some but then it gets harder and harder and the next thing you know you are eating a whole pint of ice cream accompanied by a good dose of shame. To avoid this, there are apparently techniques that can be used but I would need to do some more research before I can share what those are, but in the meantime, remember that this is normal for our brains to act this way and maybe knowing this it can help avoid the feeling of shame. It can also be helpful to plan ahead for when it happens (not if) and what we can do in this specific situation to keep going even if our self-control is not what it should be. It is important to train self-control and it is possible to increase this skill.

6. Self-confidence

Belief that you can do what you are setting out to do is important to help keep the motivation and the goal going. If you have low self-esteem and believe from the start that you won’t be able to do your New Year’s Resolution, it can be both frustrating and almost ensuring that you will fail. There is research that shows that a group who believed they had the resources needed to finish a task were more likely to accomplish it than a group that were given the same resources but made to believe they could not do it.

Working on confidence is difficult and dependent on many things, but being kind to yourself, not focusing on the negative, learning to enjoy the process and celebrating the small steps achieved can help. Keep in mind why your are doing this and what you hope to accomplish (use a daily reminder if necessary) and you will hopefully be able to move past this block. Again, having outside help with this aspect is important because we may be too critical and not understand our own value which others can see. Don’t give up and know that you are not alone in this struggle and there is hope. (I will touch more on this in a future article).

Conclusion

Remember, every day is a new chance to “get it right”. Even if you skip a day, a week, a month… if it is really important to you, then you can learn to push through those inevitable pitfalls and setbacks and keep going. In the end, try to value progress over perfection and every little step is one step closer to your goal and to finally achieving that elusive New Year’s Resolution.

Since this post is already pretty wordy, I will keep the advice I found for when time limits and changing circumstances are what block the achievement of resolutions till next week (Sorry!), but trying a few of these tips (especially the plan, organize and record phase) will be very helpful in both these cases as well.

I hope with this information you all have better luck with resolutions this year and can keep them going! What other techniques have you seen or done that have helped you reach your new year’s resolution? Please share in the comments below.

Thank you for reading.

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.”

– Walter Elliot

Resources

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/motivate/201512/why-is-it-so-darn-hard-keep-new-year-s-resolutions

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/why-is-it-hard-to-keep-new-years-resolutions/

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/how-to/six-reasons-why-your-new-year-resolutions-dont-work/articleshow/88658576.cms?from=mdr