How to Set Good Goals for New Year’s Resolutions
It’s that time of year again. We look ahead to the new year and think about how we can be better. We might want to exercise more, eat healthier foods, read more books, or spend more time with friends. Or perhaps we want to stop or decrease something: drinking alcohol, doom-scrolling in the evenings, or using sarcasm with students. Whatever your hopes for the new year may be, the kinds of goals you set matter. So, let’s think about how to set good goals for New Year’s resolutions.
The Fresh Start Effect
First, let’s think about why New Year’s resolutions might be worth setting in the first place. While you can set new goals and try to change behaviors anytime of year, there’s some science behind why it’s better to do it during particular times. This is something behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explores in How to Change and something I suggest we leverage in Rekindle Your Professional Fire. The idea is simple. You’re more likely to stick with a change in behavior if you make the change at a time that feels like a fresh start. Your birthday or the first day of a month are examples. You’re more likely to stick with a change if you start on a Monday as opposed to a Thursday. The beginning of a new school year is a great fresh start for teachers. And, of course, January 1 is probably the ultimate fresh start. We think, “new year, new me” and we’re more likely to stick with a change.
Set Goals About Habits Not Results
So why do we so often fail at keeping our New Year’s resolutions? I think one mistake we often make is that we set goals around results. This is another idea I explore in Rekindle Your Professional Fire. We want to lose weight, so we set a goal of losing 10 pounds. There are a couple of problems with this. One is that there’s no plan for how to get there if all we have is the goal. Are we just going to make ourselves be healthier? What does that look like? The other problem is that it’s easy to meet the goal and then check it off. You exercise a ton and eat healthy foods for two weeks, and you drop the 10 pounds. Now what? If you haven’t set new habits, you’re likely to fall back into your old ones. You end up right back where you were.
Instead, set goals about habits—ones that don’t have an endpoint. Replace your daily afternoon soda with a seltzer. Read professional journal articles every Wednesday afternoon. Dress more professionally to boost your sense of professionalism. Write down three positives or successes from the day in a journal every afternoon to boost your sense of competence. These aren’t things you’ll accomplish and check off your list. They’re new habits that will lead to results and then keep on giving.
Set Small Goals
Here’s another important idea from RPF and one beautifully articulated by James Clear in Atomic Habits. Big goals may be inspirational in the moment, but they’re often unrealistic. This means we’re likely to crash and burn. So instead of setting a goal of gamifying your entire curriculum, maybe a more realistic goal is to play academic games every Friday. Small goals you can accomplish are way more impactful that huge goals that you can’t. Also, success with small goals can then lead you to take on new small goals. It feels good to see yourself getting into new healthier habits, and once you get a new habit in place, it’s exciting to think about the next small change you want to make.
Create a System for Tracking Progress
Big goals are attractive because we want to see big (and often quick) results. A challenge with setting small goals about habits is that we don’t get the immediate gratification of the big quick win. So try setting up a system that let’s you see your progress. For example, I log my daily running miles in a journal so I can see the miles adding up. When writing a book, I fill in progress bars that I fill in as I work on chapters so I can see myself making headway. Fitness trackers count our steps so we can see movement accumulating through the day.
What is a system for tracking progress you might use? Would keeping tallies on a sticky note help you see how many times you use the stairs instead of the elevator? Or could you create a checklist as you try to eat 30 different fruits and vegetables each week? Would a journal help you see your weekly successes in the classroom piling up?
So, as you think about setting resolutions for the coming new year, keep these ideas in mind. Set small goals about habits and routines, and you’ll be more likely to meet with success that will last.
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