It’s another New Year and few new resolutions been made. After a month some of you might have already broken those resolutions and feeling guilty. Some of you might be struggling hard to keep the resolutions alive.
Good luck to those who are still continuing with the resolution and those are the only one who will be benefitted the most. You are already on right track and keep continuing the good work.
If you feel under the category who made resolutions at the start of the year but not able to keep that. You keep them for few days or months but never able to achieve your targets. You feel your resolutions are under "my impossible resolutions" category? Do not worry, this article will help you to keep your resolutions, going forward.
I was in the category where I made resolutions on the eve of New Year and break them in a day or two. Sometimes I tried for another 15 days and broke them. Everything changed when I started following these steps and find SMART way to keep them which benefitted me over the year.
Although, I still break some resolutions but keep most of them. So I am still learning and mastering this technique but it’s definitely worth sharing with you.
Create SMART Resolutions
Will you able to keep your resolutions or not, is decided by the way you make it. What is your resolution(s) this year? These are some sample common resolutions people make.
To lose weight this year.
Stop smoking this year.
To write a best-selling novel this year.
To become class topper this year.
To transform self into a traveler this year.
You can add your resolution to this list and verify if you are making your resolutions correct way or not.
The intentions of making any of your resolutions will be always right. If you are able to keep them, then the fruits of benefits will be rewarded to you only.
The only problem with all these above resolutions, they are not SMART and hence will fail eventually.
Your resolutions are your target of this year. So treat them as targets to achieve with some strict deadlines, of a year.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessary your resolutions must start on 1st January and end on 31st December. It can start on 1st January but can be ended any date of the year. In short, resolutions are as good as goals of your life targeted specific to one year.
What is the SMART resolution?
The full form of SMART is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. This means any resolution you make, must fall in this category.
Always make a resolution which is Realistic, Specific, Measurable, and also has a definite Time period, with a clear execution plan and completion date. Yes, everything must be incorporated into one or two lines of resolution.
Now, let’s make all the above resolutions SMART.
SMART Resolution Example 1
There was no harm in thinking “To lose weight this year”. The only problem is how much and till when. So that you can define your further action plan.
- I will lose 10 Kg weight by 31st October.
To make it Realistic you need to ensure the weight you are going to lose is specific to your body. 10 Kg may be too low or too high for you to loose.
Don’t create a resolution that is not realistic enough to achieve. Like losing 10 Kg every month. What so ever exercise you do, initially 10 Kg a month may possible but eventually, it will not. Hence it’s not realistic.
Same holds true for realistic and achievable target dates.
SMART Resolution Example 2
It’s excellent to create a resolution that you will “Stop smoking this year”. Now how realistically you are going to achieve this?
If you were a chain smoker last year and want to make a resolution to quit smoking this year. Say, you were smoking one packet a day last year (300 cigarettes a month), then you can’t change that behavior from Dec 31st last year to Jan 1st this year with no cigarette a day. Unless you have the strongest mind and body possible.
Your resolutions should be realistic enough to reduce the intake gradually to 0 by end of this year and it’s should be measurable and achievable too.
Your resolution must incorporate reduction you will do each day or month so that you don’t have to smoke at all in December. Based on the above statistics, your SMART resolution will be
- I will reduce my intake of cigarette in a month of January to 250, February 200, March 150, April 100, May 50, June 25, July 15, August 10, September 5 and 0 cigarettes in October, November, and December.
The above case is just an example. I am not a smoker, to provide you a perfect plan but I believe you got the idea which can help you to keep your resolution.
If your mind is strong enough to wake up one fine day and decide, you will never smoke or your life had triggered an emotional event that helped you to stop smoking from next day onwards, and you actually stopped smoking that way, then this SMART resolution is not applicable.
Smart Resolution Example 3
This resolution will help you to identify the unrealistic approaches while creating it. The Original resolution was “To write a best-selling novel this year”.
The unrealistic part of this resolution is to make your novel best-selling. To make a novel best-selling, will never be in your hand. It will be in the hand of peoples who will love to read it.
You must not incorporate anything that’s not in your hand, inside the resolution.
Using keywords like Best Seller, Getting Published, become famous will be good for motivation while creating the resolution but after some time this will become the de-motivator to achieve your goal of the year.
Hence, the resolutions must not include anything which is beyond your control. In this case, your focus should be to write the Novel and at most publish it this year. So your SMART resolution will be
- I will write 500 words every day. I will finish my novel in 4 months. Ready the final draft by 31st July this year. Then work on publishing this novel by November 30th
Here it’s assumed that your Novel will be around 60000 words and you will able to write every day. This will realistically change based on the efforts you can actually make each day/week/month to realize this resolution.
Smart Resolution Example 4 and 5
You must have got the idea now about SMART resolutions. Let’s take the remaining two scenarios quickly.
When you make resolutions like “to become class topper this year.” Or “to transform self into a traveler this year”, your current and existing circumstances matters apart from your efforts too.
In the first case, while making a resolution like this in January when your exam is in February will only make sense if you can apply lots of intelligence along with hard work.
Most of the school/college sessions are already half way by January and exams are anytime between Feb to April. So how much you have already studied last year will define your approach realistic or not. Unless it’s a new semester starting in January, this resolution may not be realistic.
Most of the school/college sessions are already half way by January and exams are anytime between Feb to April. So how much you have already studied last year will define your approach realistic or not. Unless it’s a new semester starting in January, this resolution may not be realistic.
- I will study 10 hours every day and will complete 1 chapter each of 3 different subjects every day.
The study capacity is dependent on the student and highly impacted by surroundings hence, be realistic will be the only recommended approach.
In the second case, you can transform yourself traveler based on your current financial situation, any spiritual, physical or mental dependencies. You need to plan your travel bookings by keeping all these situations in mind.
To transform yourself as a traveler you must mark the places you want to travel this year. Place them based on the coverage you can do each month along with other realistic dependent circumstances.
- I will go to Jammu and Kashmir in January, China in February, The United Kingdom and Scotland in March….and Goa in December.
Fill-up each month with some destinations (domestic or international) you really want to travel. Just keep the realistic features like budget, dependencies, availability and routes in mind while creating this resolution.
Execute SMART Resolutions
I have explained you in details about how to make resolutions. Once you have the resolution ready, write it down. This will become your goal. Identify who and what can help you to achieve this goal. Write that too.
Once you have the plan then your next job is to execute that plan on daily basis. If your resolutions are SMART you can easily distribute and target your daily goals.
Create a daily schedule to help you achieve those targets and also act on that schedule. You can either create your own custom daily schedule or can choose any online tools for this specific purpose.
In the first SMART resolution above, the person needs to lose 1 Kg of weight every month i.e. at least 33 grams every day.
To execute the resolution, you need to find what diet you need to incorporate or which exercise or instructor to choose. Your daily schedule and execution plan should only help to reduce weight and ensure you don’t put weight too.
Your plan must have weekly, fortnightly or monthly milestones and which will eventually accumulate to final milestones. Planning alone will not help, you need to execute it and also monitor your executions timely to ensure you are in right track or not.
This approach will also identify current or future obstacles early that can derail your resolution. Monitoring progress on time will also help you to analyze if you are going to achieve resolution on stipulated time frame or not.
Don’t forget to treat yourself, whenever you achieve some percentage of milestones. This will help to release happy and positive hormones and will keep you motivated along the way.
Example: treat when you reduce smoking to 25% or 50% compared to last year.
Smart People – SMART Resolutions
When a smart person fails to achieve targets, He neither blame himself nor others, he will just move on and try again.
Within a year while keeping your resolution, your environments or circumstance may change and will obstruct your resolutions.
Rather than losing hope or blaming yourself, luck or circumstances, try to find solution or workaround to that situation. Adjust and become flexible enough to accept the change. Work with the change rather than against the change.
Example: You want to write 500 words every day and some guests showed up suddenly. Your routine may get disrupt. In such kind of situations, change your schedule to fit in. If you write only in morning, and in this situation, it’s not possible then switch the writing at night or to different time accordingly. Still, if you miss your schedule then don’t lose hope. If there is a way to cover it up by putting some extra efforts go for that option or draw confidence from the achievements you got till your guests arrived.
If you are going to miss your deadline but you are working consistently towards it then don’t worry about the time. You may only have estimated it wrongly and try to achieve that soon.
Your SMART resolutions will only work when you adjust with your circumstances smartly. If you fail to achieve it within a year, then don’t wait till New Year to re-create your resolution. Just analyze the situation of what went wrong and then re-create resolution.
Realistic approach and correct estimate in your resolutions will be the key for achievements.
The day you changed yourself to make SMART resolution, consider that particular day as New Year. Your resolutions should be any day resolution rather than only New Year resolution.
If you have missed the month or years to your last resolution, today is the good time to re-start, re-create and re-execute that again.
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If you have any further questions on this article please leave your comments and I will try my best to help you out.
©Tapas Majumdar, Not for reproduction without Author's permission.
