How to achieve your new year’s resolution

On the 31st of December 2017 around 10 pm, whilst putting my daughter to bed. I said to her, tomorrow will be the first day of the year 2018.

I went on to explain that on the 1st of January 2018, the Earth would have completed its rotation around the Sun.

So she asked me to explain a bit more about the Solar system (she remembered from School), I explained to her that all the planets rotate around the Sun, that the Earth takes 365 days to rotate around the Sun.

It was at this moment, that it occurred to me again that: There are a few constants in the universe: day and night will always come. The Earth will rotate around the Sun, all on the Earth will rotate around the Sun, worshipping it.

These constants do not change regardless of who you are, your wealth, your nationality, your ethnicity or gender.

In the next 365 days, we all have the same amount of time. When January 2019 comes, what will matter is

what we have been able to accomplish with our time.

If we decide not to accomplish anything, do nothing, then come the end of the year we would have accomplished nothing.

However, if we decide to accomplish something, be it to buy a new car, to find a new job, get a promotion, learn a new skill, to find new friendships, new relationships, have a baby, visit a new place, to buy a house, to increase our wealth by x% or whatever it may be, provided we make the effort necessary to achieve the goal, At the end of 2018 we would have achieved what we set out to do.

Yet, so many people will set goals at the start of the year and by March or June, those goals would have been forgotten.

This brings me to the goal-setting process, here is how I set and achieve goals:

1/ State a goal: I ask myself why I want to achieve this goal and write the reasons next to it.

2/ Weigh it: I assess the possible paths to the goal, benefits of achieving the goal, what the trade-off for achieving the goal is, what’s needed to make it, assess upside/downside and plan to protect the downside.

3/ Plan: Details what is going to be done to achieve the goal.

Once the plan for achieving the goal is set out, the plan is broken into smaller chunks that can be tackled daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.

As an example: If my goal is to buy a new house for X amount, then the first step is to save Y for Z number of months to be able to buy the house. So my plan would be to save Y amount every month.

4/ Action: Work on making it happen.

If you have a plan to achieve a goal, it is important to do the things that help you achieve that goal.

If your goal is to learn a new instrument, then you need to make time to learn that instrument and actually do the learning/practising.

It’s no use having plans to achieve a goal and sit on the sofa all night after work watching TV, You need to put the effort in to make it happen.

5/ Focus, optimise, make changes & persist on the goal until it happens.

It is this stage that most goals fail to materialise, life happens, something unexpected happens and all our plans are put out of whack. The key here is to constantly look for ways to bypass setbacks and achieve our goals.

Remind yourself of why you set out to achieve the goal in the first place and re-focus yourself to go for it.

6/ Review what you achieved and did not achieve, write out your lessons learned and make sure not to repeat mistakes.

At the end of every week, month, quarter and year what has been done is reviewed against the plan to see where things are and new plans are made for the achieving upcoming goals.

If I achieve all my goals for the week, I give myself a score and a tap on my back, if I fail to achieve my target, I learn from the lessons and try to achieve my targets for the upcoming week, month and year.

Last thought will leave with you, If you want to achieve big goals then set big goals.

By end of December 2018, Jeff Bezos will achieve something different to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg will achieve something different to Evan Spiegel.

What all these individuals have in common is that they all set goals and work to make it happen.