3 Alternatives to Making New Year’s Resolutions

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It’s the time of year when everyone thinks about the question: “What do I wish were different next year?” The point of making a New Year’s Resolution is usually something like:

• Have a clear goal / direction for myself

• Motivate myself to change

• Become a better version of myself

Yes! All that is great. But…while I love the reflection and planning aspects of that question, I want to caution against doing things that I so frequently see (and maybe used to do myself!) at this time of year. Basically, don’t make a typical New Year’s Resolution. Try a new thing instead.

Avoid

Here are a few things to avoid when making your New Year’s Plan (as they call it in Mandarin):

1. Avoid “whole year” goals

A friend’s plan was to do a whole year of podcast episodes. That’s tough because once you miss one, you’ve failed the whole thing.

He wisely reframed it as a much more attainable “produce 365 podcast episodes, in as short a time as possible.” Even though it took him 13 months, it still feels like a great accomplishment because it was reframed to be achievable. Well done Paul!

2. Avoid “infinite” goals

I once had a goal to “drink more water” every day. This is even worse than the whole year goal. I can NEVER miss a day for the rest of my life!

A much better goal would be: “See how many days next week I can drink an additional cup of water than normal.”

3. Avoid stuff mostly out of your control

Goals like “get a promotion” or “get my big break” or even “loose weight” or “quit smoking” are really tough and can be really demotivating. They feel so distant, so out of my control. Here are some ways to question these:

• What percent is in my control or someone else’s? (If it’s less than 90% in my control, I ditch it).

• Why didn’t I already accomplish this? (If there are some deeper issues, i.e. nicotine addiction is hard to kick, then I ditch it).

Again, we’re going for high motivation here, so avoid things that you can already predict will torpedo your motivation.

The Common Thread: Motivation

Remember, our goal is usually to motivate ourselves to be better. But “whole year” and “infinite” goals and things out of my control do exactly the opposite. The will probably fail and that will be super demotivating.

Instead Try

1. Look back before looking forward

Before planning for a better you, let’s see how much better you already got in a year! People have been writing about the benefits of a “done list” (vs. a “to-do list”) for a while, but the New Year’s Holiday is a great time to try it.

Remember the key: motivating! Write as much or as little as is exciting and motivating to you. Big themes. Little wins. Whatever makes you feel great about last year!

But you really have to write it. There’s something about pen on paper or text on screen that’s magical for motivation.

2. Set a mini “driver” goal

If your goal is “lose weight,” that sounds too infinite. (Loose how much? By when? And keep it off FOREVER?!)

But the deeper problem of being kind of out of my control is worse. I don’t have a “lose weight” knob that I simply turn to the right or left. It’s complicated and an “after the fact” result of other behaviors. THOSE are the behaviors to focus on.

How about set a goal that’s something you can control, but is super tiny? Something like:

• Eat 1 fewer Oreo for the week of Jan 5-11 than the week before.

This is something we at ADAPTIVE LEADERS call a “driver.” When you’re driving a car, you can control where it goes. The previous “lose weight” goal is more like the the result or destination of a bunch of these sorts of mini goals stacking up. (This is similar to 4DX’s Lead vs. Lag Measures.)

One of the best ways to fuel your motivation: lots of tiny, quick wins that stack up. And if you miss one, it’s a “quick loss” that doesn’t sting so much because you can just set a new one next week.

I do recommend going weekly for these rather than monthly.

3. Design Experiments

One of the most motivating things for me is to focus on learning rather than accomplishing. This means experimenting!

Experiments have these characteristics:

• You learn something specific about yourself you didn’t know before (e.g. “How many Oreos am I eating each week?”)

• You can do it extremely quickly (e.g. “For the next 7 days, I will count how many Oreos I eat.”)

• You are excited to try it (if you’re not, then the experiment needs to be redesigned)

Again, I recommend a 7 day (max) window for these.

They can be about almost anything, but these are the main categories:

• My behavior (e.g. “I will trying going to Starbucks to work and see if I’m more/less productive than at home.”

• How I’m perceived (e.g. “I will ask my friend John: ‘What’s one thing I’m really good at and one thing I need to get better at?’”

• The past (e.g. “I will use the Screentime app to total how many hours I spent on the Youtube app on my phone for the past 3 weeks.”)

• The future (e.g. “I will ask 5 questions before giving my opinion in the meeting on Tuesday.”)

• (and more!)

This is WAY more fun than a vague goal to accomplish something because I learn something I didn’t know before that can inform a) my next experiment, b) the next mini driver goal (not THAT Minnie Driver!).

Happy New Year and happy goal setting for the next 7 days!

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