Your Greatest Year: Day 2

Every year, millions of people set New Year’s goals and resolutions. But just a month or two later, most of them get dropped. Your Greatest Year is a multi-part series aimed at helping you make your New Year a smashing success. 🎉

Yesterday, we talked about limiting your number of NY resolutions to no more than 12 to boost your likelihood of successfully accomplishing them. Today, I’m sharing two more big ideas to help you step into your greatest year. Let’s get into it…

1.
Find your sweet spot

One of the biggest reasons people fail to achieve their New Year’s goals is because they aim too low—setting goals that don’t push the limits of their comfort zone. In other words: their goals are too boring; they lack a certain excitement factor.

Another reason people fail to achieve their New Year’s goals is because They aim too high.

Both of the above can cause a severe lack of motivation when it comes to making big changes in life.

In order to set new year’s goals you’ll actually achieve, you need a little fear and a little friction.

So, if you want to make your resolutions stick this New Year, make them exciting, and make sure they’re challenging enough to push you just a little bit outside your comfort zone.

If your goals aren’t exciting and challenging enough, you’ll get too bored and give up.

But if your goals are too challenging (regardless of how exciting they may be) you’ll likely give up by February.

Your actionable insights:

The sweet spot for yearly goals is to avoid aiming too high or too low, and instead finding a middle-ground somewhere in between. You’re looking for desirable difficulty: not too hard, not too easy, but just right.

Side note: please don’t misunderstand me when I advise against aiming too high—I’m a huge proponent of thinking big and aiming for the moon. Develop a big vision, but start small. When in doubt, challenge yourself to lean in the direction of aiming higher, rather than lower.

2.
Set deadlines

A goal without a deadline is a dream… That might be a worn-out statement, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

If you’ve still got last year’s list of goals and resolutions, pull it out and take a look at it.

Do each of your goals have a deadline/timeline for their achievement?

Most people create an inspiring list of yearly goals, only to realize 11 months later that they’ve barely scratched the surface on making them a reality…

One of the biggest things that keeps people from sticking with their resolutions is a lack of clarity about when they’ll work on their goals, and by when they plan on achieving them.

Honestly, most timelines are completely off the mark anyway…

Most people don’t get the body of their dreams as quickly as they’d planned.

Major projects rarely get done on time.

And Elon Musk has been delaying the release of the Tesla Roadster for three years now.

But none of this means deadlines don’t matter.

Having a clear due date in front of you to work towards will always beat the wing-it mentality… Even if you don’t get to where you want to be when you thought you would, you’ll still get there faster if you’ve got a clear deadline in front of you.

Your actionable insights:

Every new year’s goal or resolution you set needs a deadline.

If it’s a habit-goal—like exercising, writing, or spending time with family—create a recurring block of time on your calendar to practice doing it.

If it’s a big goal, set a deadline for when you plan to accomplish it. Then, break that big goal down into smaller sub-goals and sub-tasks—many of which should also have deadlines, also known as “milestones.”