Stop setting New Year’s resolutions
Do this one tactic instead.
If you’re reading this on Medium, you’re probably into personal development, entrepreneurship, fitness, creativity and/or hitting big goals.
(On a side note, can we all give Ev Williams a hand for creating an amazing community here?)
Since 2017 is right around the corner, you’re also probably starting to think about what resolutions you want to put in place to ensure next year is your best year ever.
I have one piece of advice:
Don’t wait.
Instead of setting New Year’s resolutions, start today.
If you have a clear enough idea of what a good and healthy lifestyle looks for you and are able to map out action in order to achieve said life, what are you waiting for?
At the time of this writing there are 24 days left this year. Let’s assume you have 2 hours everyday to devote to what ever new resolution you set.
If you waited until 1/1/2017 to start working towards your resolutions you will have missed out on:
- Writing 115,200 words of your next novel
- Running 240 miles of marathon training
- Reading 11 books from your wish list
- Learning 10% of a new language
(**I can explain how I calculated these in the responses**)
Setting goals and resolutions is important, don’t get me wrong. However, it’s waiting for your calendar to read January 1st that has me worried.
Only 8% of people will stick to their New Year’s resolutions next year. You know why?
Because people think New Year’s is some magical time to finally make a change to their life. When in reality, they could’ve made a change today.
There is no magical time to set out after your goals. There is no road map to your accomplishments. There is no perfect way to achieve what you want to achieve in this life.
There is only today.
Not New Year’s, not tomorrow, not even next year. Today.
Whether you like to admit it or not, we all prefer the comfortable status quo with our lives.
It’s easy. It’s safe.
But venturing out and attempting to make our life useful…
“No, no, no,” says your brain. “We can do that someday. Let’s just watch Netflix tonight.”
We are our own worst enemies to progress. We self-sabotage our goals and resolutions with the simple, yet effective lie of someday.
You can’t take action someday. You can only take action today.
No matter how big your resolution or goal may appear, it can be conquered through a series of small steps day after day. But it requires you to start now.
People underestimate how much they can accomplish in a few hours each day.
I live by the 80/20 rule. 80% of my day is spent on life necessities, working full-time, spending time with my family, sleeping, etc. The other 20% is spent going after my personal goals.
If you extrapolate this 20% over the course of a year, that’s 1,752 hours invested in my goals — the equivalent of working full-time for 10 months.
I call that margin.
You have it. Stop waiting for a magic ball to drop to find it.
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Hello, my name is Declan. I’m a husband, father, writer, and founder of SHRPA. My mission is to get 1,000 people serious about going after their goals and dreams.
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