In many past and contemporary world cultures, the beginning of a new year has been a time to repent old mistakes, reflect on choices, and aspire to better things in future. Our own tradition of New Year’s resolutions reflects this. Unfortunately, our tradition of failing to meet our New Year’s Resolutions is almost as strong as our tradition of making them. Why?

There are 4 key problems with the way New Year’s resolutions are usually made. Avoiding these problems can transform what might otherwise be nothing more than a well-intentioned gesture into a personal victory.

1. Only make a New Year’s Resolution if you’re not in the middle of another life change
If you’re already working on fixing your financial habits, don’t try to take on weight loss or learning French or organizing your files at the same time. Every change in habits or substantial project requires attention and focus. Trying to spread that attention and focus too widely typically brings all of the efforts down, because in this situation, there’s not enough brain time to fully support any one of them.

2. Make only one New Year’s Resolution
This is another part of making sure you can focus your attention: to make real progress, hold yourself to one new goal at a time.

3. Plan immediate steps, not just long-term ideals
While it’s important to understand your ultimate goal, it’s also important to define what your first steps will be toward achieving it. A goal of “Write a novel” or “expand sales into the northwestern states” is so large and complex that thinking about trying to achieve it directly is overwhelming and tends to sap motivation. It’s much more effective to focus on what the very first steps to achieving the goal might be, like choosing a novel premise from a list of book ideas or researching demographics for target markets.

4. Set aside a regular time to refocus and do feedback
Any attempted change in habits or push to accomplish a project will falter and fail unless your attention is brought back to it on a regular basis. With some projects and responsibilities, like taking care of a baby, you’re naturally prodded to not forget. On most, though, keeping attention focused means setting aside time–preferably at least a couple of times a week–to review progress so far and plan ways to stay on track and improve.

Our New Year’s Resolutions are traditionally made regardless of what else we’re doing in our lives, in bunches, with only large goals in mind, and without specific plans for follow-through. By bucking this trend and carefully nurturing one new goal at a time with specific, short-term steps and regular feedback, we can participate in the tradition of making New Year’s resolutions without participating in the tradition of  failing to keep them.

Photo by hebedesign

Changing habits, making good choices, or really pushing hard toward a goal can get very difficult when it comes time to act. Probably you’ve had experiences, like I have, where good intentions beforehand weren’t enough to force a good choice when the time came. Continuing to try despite not always succeeding is key in developing good habits, but it’s not the only way to be more successful with self-motivation. In fact, there are a lot of things we can do to make self-motivation easier. While you might already know some of these ways, especially if you’ve been reading this site, the reason for this article is to ask the question, “Are you doing everything you can to make progress toward your goal easier?”

To help provide a good answer to that question (and to offer some areas to look at in case the answer is “no”), here’s a list of many ways to make willpower and self-motivation easier. After all, making the task easier usually means getting better results for less effort: it falls into the category of the time-worn advice “Work smarter, not harder.” There are limits to how much willpower we can summon up on a moment’s notice, but there may not be limits to the advantages we can stack up beforehand.

Decide what to do and make plans
Probably the single most important thing any of us can do to facilitate good choices is to understand what those choices should be ahead of time. If the task is studying, then how much studying needs to be done, and when should it happen? If the task is some kind of daily upkeep, like following up on e-mails within the day or keeping the dishes from piling up, what’s the exact plan for how these things will be handled?

Anticipate problems
If you ever find yourself explaining away self-motivation problems by saying “I was going to ____, but ____,” this may be a sign that you need to work on anticipating problems. Someone who’s trying to eat more healthily will be much more successful if they figure out what the options and dangers are before they walk into a party or a restaurant, for instance. Someone who’s self-employed and is trying to get in more work time will want to figure out ground rules for situations like when friends visit from out of town or for how much time–if any–it’s OK to spend doing things like volunteering or socializing during the work day.

Improve your tools and environment
In other posts I’ve gone into some detail about the value of choosing the best tools and setting up an encouraging environment for work on your goal. For example, a more welcoming environment can help a writer write more; having the right software or paper system can help another person organize much more easily.

Prepare
It can help sometimes if we think of ourselves as our own assistants. We have large, important goals, but often moving toward those goals is much easier when we do some grunt work ahead of time. To help facilitate a study session later in the day, try laying out books and other study materials on a table or desk so that starting requires just sitting down. To eat better, shop better.

On Monday I’ll continue with Part II and five more ways to make self-motivation easier.

Photo by Somewhat Frank