Here are some New Year’s Resolutions excerpted from a long list I made in 2008:

  • I will floss more.
  • I will exercise regularly and eat well in order to lose weight.
  • I will maintain optimism in the face of adversity at all times.
  • I will read more for pleasure.

Guess how many of them I achieved?

You might have guessed “none,” and that’s probably a good estimation, but the more honest answer is that I really don’t know. How much was I flossing before, and how much did I aspire to floss in 2008? What constitutes “regular exercise”? I’m certain my optimism wavered at times, but did I improve from the previous year? And if so, is that enough to check the goal off my list?

The problem with these goals is that they run the gamut from vague to unrealistic. I think this is how a lot of people approach New Year’s Resolutions.  They envision their best self, break that down into sections of what they want to improve, and put that list on paper.  (The last part of that is good – studies show that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them!)  But they don’t have any way to follow up to see if they achieved their goals.

 

SMART Goals

In order for a goal to be useful, It needs to meet the following criteria:

  • Specific – Exactly what is it that you want to achieve? Describe this in terms that are easy to identify as “I did this” or “I didn’t do this”.
  • Measurable – What, numerically, do you want to change? With what frequency do you want to do the thing you’re trying to do? Or how many of the thing you’re trying to do do you want to do?
  • Attainable – Is your goal realistic, or are you setting yourself up for failure?
  • Relevant – Is your goal compatible with the other things that are going on in your life right now?
  • Timely – By when do you want to achieve your goal? How will you know when it’s time to evaluate and determine whether your goal should be modified, or a new goal should be created?

There are some variations on this acronym… Some people say that A stands for Achievable or even Aggressive, and many sources say that R stands for Realistic (though with A as Attainable, that’s fairly redundant). But this seems to be the most prevalent model.

So given this information, let’s revisit my 2007 goals:

 

I will floss more.

Good

  • Specific – describes what I will do
  • Attainable – depending on frequency, only adds 1-2 minutes to my daily routine
  • Relevant – does not take me off track from other, more pressing priorities

Needs Work

  • Measurable – How often will I floss?
  • Timely – By when will I make this change?

 

I will exercise regularly and eat well in order to lose weight.

Good

  • Attainable – well, probably. I haven’t really defined this one well enough to know. If I want to lose 50 pounds, aside from being really unhealthy given my current body weight, it probably isn’t doable. But if I want to lose 15-20 pounds, that’s within the bounds of Attainable.
  • Relevant – addressed a concern that I wanted to prioritize

Needs Work

  • Specific –What kind of exercise will I do? What constitutes eating well?
  • Measurable – How much weight do I want to lose? How often will I exercise?
  • Timely – By when will I achieve this?

 

I will maintain optimism in the face of adversity at all times.

Good

  • Measurable – Technically “at all times” is a measurable quantity, though no barometer for measuring optimism is given.
  • Relevant – At this time, I was dealing with some challenging situations in my life, so this was relevant to what I was working to achieve.

Needs Work

  • Specific – What does it mean to “maintain optimism”? What does that look like in practice?
  • Attainable – Absolutely not. No one is able to be happy all the time.
  • Timely – No indication of when I was going to check in about this goal to determine if it needed adjustment.

 

I will read more for pleasure.

Good

  • Attainable – Maybe, depending on the quantities I set for myself.

Needs Work

  • Specific – Read more what? Books, magazines, newspaper articles, movie reviews?
  • Measurable – How many books (or other) do I want to read?
  • Relevant – Not at all. I was in graduate school in 2008, and had a lot of assigned reading for my classes. This did not fit in with the lifestyle of a full-time student whatsoever.
  • Timely – No deadline indicated.

 

2016 New Year’s Resolutions

Eight years later, I’m working on many of the same goals. You may not find that too surprising… Those old resolutions are so poorly structured that even if I’d met them, I would have no way of knowing.

I’ve learned a great deal about goal-setting in that time. One of the things I have learned is not to overburden myself. This fantastic and entertaining article talks about why you can’t throw your energy into a half dozen places at the same time and expect to see success. Because of that awareness, I plan to find one or two things to focus on this year, rather than the dozen I had identified in 2008.

That being said, if I were going to adapt the same resolutions from 8 years ago, here’s what my list would look like now, using “SMART goals” as a template:

  • I will floss a minimum of one time per day to maintain 0 cavities by my next dentist appointment in 6 months.
  • I will follow the weight-lifting regimen from [Nerd Fitness Academy] 3x per week in order to decrease my body fat by 3% in the next 3 months.
  • I will fill 30% of my plate with vegetables at a minimum of 2 meals per day, and eat dessert a maximum of 1 time per week in order to lose 10 pounds in the next 3 months.
  • I will attend weekly therapy sessions for the next two months in order to increase my overall sense of contentedness from a self-scaled 6 out of 10 to a self-scaled 8 out of 10.
  • I will read 25 books for pleasure in the next year.

Using this template for creating Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely goals, what are your New Year’s Resolutions?  Leave me a comment to let me know!