Track Your New Years Resolutions with our Goal Setting Worksheet

Lots of us make New Years Resolutions. Lots of us break them within the first month, first week, first day even!

This is partly because simply making “a resolution” to do something is not enough to keep us going. We need more motivation. One very good way to improve motivation, is to be clear on WHY you’re making this resolution, so that the end goal is clear and pulls you forward. For that to work, you need to set goals first and work back from there to what you need to do to reach the goals - the resolutions grow out of the goals you want to achieve.

Make Specific Resolutions

For example, many people make a resolution to “lose weight”. Fine. Why? How much? How?

Here are my personal reasons…

Why: to help lower my cholesterol level (in order to avoid the early death from heart disease that all my mother’s brothers suffered), improve fitness (so I’m not puffing and panting when I have to walk uphill) and improve looks (I dislike my pot belly!). Knowing why - it’s a real life-or-death thing! - makes me much more motivated to really do something.

How much? 10lb. I know, not much, but that’s all it would take for me.

How? Reduce cookie and candy intake, increase phyical activity, increase vegetable and fruit intake.

Specific Resolutions:

Reduce cookies and cakes to 2 pieces a day max
Reduce candy intake to 100g/week from 400+ (1/4 lb down from 1lb)
Carry out at least 2 exercise sessions/week (walking, swimming or heavy gardening)
Eat at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day

You can see that it’s now much easier for me to tell whether I’m keeping my resolutions. In this case I haven’t made a time goal for losing the 10lb as I know that keeping those resolutions will cause my weight to drop, but I don’t know how fast, and I don’t mind if it takes a while.

Setting and Reaching Your Goals

Turning Goals into Activities / Resolutions

As well as turning a non-specific resolution like “lose weight” into specific resolutions via working out what the goal is, you can start from an existing goal and work back to your resolutions.

Say you have a goal to earn $100,000 next year. (If you already do, just imagine $1,000,000 instead!). Just having that goal is not enough to make it happen (The Secret notwithstanding!). You need to work backwards from the goal to discover what you need to actually DO in order to get there.

Download and use our Goal Setting Worksheet to help you turn your New Years Resolutions into practical, useful, reachable goals!

If your goals involve getting organized and home organization, make sure to check our home organization tools!