Why Goals Are Better Than Resolutions In The New Year

As we embark on another New Year, you’ll most likely hear the word “resolution” more than you would like. Resolutions are usually associated with a great new diet or cutting back on pints. New Year’s resolutions are great for those who stick to them. However, if you’re really looking to make 2019 your best year yet, you might want to change your thinking just a bit.

VeryWellFit writes, “Every year, throngs of people—maybe even you—choose a list of resolutions for the next year. Generally, these are habits they will try to do every day or habits they will try to avoid for as long as they can.” Sounds familiar, right?

The article continues to state that “Unfortunately, many of these resolutions are forgotten within a month or two. A major reason for this is that it’s deceptively difficult to develop or deny ingrained habits ‘cold turkey’.” Just like that, your New Year’s resolutions are smashed to bits.

Avoiding the guilt and shame of only keeping your resolution for two weeks into the year can be avoided by setting goals instead. For example, a resolution could be to stop eating ice cream. If you like ice cream, this is very close to impossible. Once you give in to that first scoop of salted caramel, your resolution is ruined.

However, if you instead set a goal to lose one stone by June, then you can have a small scoop here and there without ruining your goal. No guilt, no shame. Overall, it is said that flexible goals achieve better results than a steadfast resolution.

Making goals for your website

Since this is a web hosting blog and not a health publication, let’s look at how you can apply these same ideas to your website or ecommerce business. Rather than stating that your resolution is to never skip a blog post, create the goal that you will post six times each month of the year. Doing so promotes a sense of accomplishment rather than failure.

Goals are crucial for business growth and should be taken very seriously. It can be hard to be accountable for them though, especially if you are a small company with a few employees, or just yourself. Below you will find some ways to make goals and stick to them for the year to come:

Step one: Assess

Think about 2018. What worked well for your enterprise and what didn’t? Try to make a list of your achievements and setbacks to decide where you should base your efforts.

Step two: Prioritise

Imagine that you can only meet one goal for the year: what would it be? Now pretend you can only meet two goals: what would they be? Continue through this exercise until you’ve prioritised 5 or 10 really great goals.

Step three: Evaluate

When creating your goals, be sure that they meet the S.M.A.R.T. criteria, which means they need to be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

Step four: Benchmark

Create milestones to help you easily see if you are on track to meet your goal before the deadline. Periodically revisit your goals to be sure you are progressing as you should.

 Step five: Take Action!

Build specific action points that you can begin to utilise straight away. There’s never a better time to start reaching for your goals than now.