The Countdown – Day 18: New Year’s Transitions

There is something I haven’t quite understood about New Year’s resolutions.

What do they actually mean?

Suppose you’ve clarified your resolutions for the upcoming year and know exactly what you want.

Do you expect to make a complete transformation as soon as the clock strikes 12? Do you expect to achieve your goals within the year, or at the end of it?

This is an extremely important point to clarify as it will define the expectations you will attach to your resolutions.

If you don’t believe that you will go through a transition phase, where you haven’t completely achieved your goals but are in the process of getting there, then you might give up on your goals prematurely.

You would admit failure only because you thought that everything in your life will change by January.

Hoping to reach your goals by the end of the year is no good, either. Although you’re giving yourself more time to reach your goals, you may end up putting off what you need to do to reach your goals, since you think you have a WHOLE 12 months to work with!

As you’ve probably realized by now, months and years tend to pass by very quickly, especially when you’re postponing the important things in your life.

So how should you approach your resolutions? And when should you expect to see the results you want?

It’s very difficult to estimate when you’ll get the results you want, but you can take an approach that allows you to celebrate your successes and helps you achieve better results.

There are 3 steps to follow:

1- Focus on spending your day in the best way possible: Trying to think of too many days ahead (let alone an entire year) will dilute the attention you’ll give to your day, where change can happen. As much as you can plan for the days ahead, it’s what you do right now that matters towards achieving your goals.

By focusing on what you can do with your day, you won’t feel regret if you don’t achieve your goals “on time” because you know you’ve done what you can.

Remember you’re only working with one day, so you can’t cram in it more than can be done in a day. Don’t force an entire project into a day, when it’s more likely that you can only commit 2 hours of your day.

Don’t expect to run a marathon every day, when it’s more likely that you can only exercise for an hour a day.

Each day, plan what can be done in that day, and adjust it according to your commitments and the circumstances you’ll be facing. But make sure that the day contributes to a transition towards your goals.

2- Look for leverage points: You won’t have perfect days, especially not at first, because an efficient use of your time requires a set of skills that you need to develop. And it’s OK that you don’t possess these skills right now. After all, you’re undergoing a transition, and you can’t expect to achieve perfection overnight.

The best way to accelerate your progress is identifying the factors that can greatly impact your performance. These can be weaknesses or “problem areas” that you need to work on, or strengths you possess that you need to harness.

If your work is being compromised by distractions, lack of clarity about what you need to do, lack of support, and a host of other reasons, pick out the most influential factor you can work on. The factor you expect to get you the greatest results with the least effort. That’s a leverage point.

You can’t work on everything, so you might as well work on what gets you the best* results possible, where you are, with what you have.

* Aiming for the “best” results or the “most important” factor can be a tricky thing, since you might spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what is the best or most important. I’ve spent a billion hours (or so) looking for the BEST productivity system, while ignoring the work I want to get done and overlooking better approaches available to me. The point is to identify the most important leverage point, given what you now know, and work with that.

3- Evaluate your performance: At the end of each day, look back on what you did, and identify the ways you can improve for the next day. Again, don’t think too far ahead. Focus on making tomorrow better than today.

How did you spend your day? What could you have done differently? What might you want to focus on more? What changes can you think of making to your day? How does your day make you feel? What can you shift around in your schedule to get better results?

By allowing a transition towards your goals and focusing on the best use of your day, you will have a more realistic take on achieving your resolutions, and will spend the time you truly need to get to where you want to go.

Without setting high expectations, or distant hopes that you will work on your resolutions someday in the months ahead.

You’ll be making use of what you have, and developing the skills you need to make better progress in the days ahead.