Every year, we tend to make extreme New Year’s resolutions on Jan. 1, only to abandon them by February or March. Even the word “resolution” can make you feel guilt or anxiety. So how do we lighten up a little, and get into an easier mindset that makes us feel motivated to start some new goals in the new year?
In my experience as a therapist and time-management consultant, the main way that people tend to go wrong with goals they’re setting is that they want to go too big too fast. They want to accomplish a very stressful sounding goal in a very short time frame. This tends to raise our stress levels, which can cause us to want to avoid getting started altogether. In other words, we overwhelm ourselves before we’ve even started moving.
So, how do we avoid doing this to ourselves, especially at the start of the new year?
Here are some easy ways to ease into your goals, while not raising your own stress:
- Stretch out your timeframe. If you’re saying, “I’m going to finish organizing the spare room by next week,” this might be too short a timeframe to do that easily. Try saying, instead, “By the end of the month, I’m going to organize the spare room.” Now, you’ve given yourself four weeks instead of one. Already, there is probably a feeling of relief about starting this particular goal!
- Break the big goal down into small steps. Now that you’ve stretched out your timeframe, how can you break the task you need to do down into very tiny steps? For example, with cleaning out the room, how many boxes would you need to donate each week? One to two boxes? If you want to write a novel by the end of the year, how many pages would that be per week? Perhaps five pages? This helps us enlist the logical, problem-solving parts of our brain and can help us feel less anxiety about starting the project.
- Identify the first step. The beginning of any new goal is often where people tend to feel the most stuck. Because it involves learning or tackling a new task and figuring frustrating problems out, many will procrastinate moving forward to avoid this step. An easy workaround is to make the first step so tiny and manageable that your brain won’t feel that much resistance towards doing it. If you want to paint a painting, maybe the first step is just to put the paintbrushes out on the table. If you’re organizing a room in your house, maybe the first step is just to tackle one very small corner of it.
- Find accountability. Studies have shown that when we have to tell someone our goal and report our weekly progress to them, that we have a 95% chance of completing it. Find a friend who wants to work on a goal together and report your weekly progress to them while listening to their progress each week as well. When it comes to supporting other people on goals, it can be helpful to simply listen and provide encouragement, no matter what stage of the process they’re in. Just keep cheering them on, even on the slow weeks. You’d be surprised how motivating this can be for people who are feeling stuck.
- Track your progress. If you can’t find someone to hold you accountable for your weekly steps, you can track them on a calendar or in a journal. You can mark off days that you take steps towards your goal on a calendar. Seeing our progress in a visual way that we’re using consistently can give us that motivation we need to keep going with our goals. You can also look for goals groups or work on goals with therapists and coaches who specialize in goal-setting.
When it comes to goals, it’s about keeping a long-term perspective. Don’t get stuck on days that were slow or weeks where not much happened. Ease up a little on your own expectations. Just know that if you keep taking small steps over time, you will get to where you want to go.
Risa Williams, a licensed therapist, mom of two kids, podcast host and psychology professor, is the award-winning book author of “The Ultimate Toolkit Books,” including “The Ultimate Time Management Toolkit.” Her newest book, “The Procrastination Playbook,” will be in stores soon.
