Ah Yes, the New Year is Upon Us
Happy New Year’s! As cliché as it may sound, the older I get, the quicker time flies—you might be feeling the same thing.
Obviously, the clock is not actually moving at a faster rate (Isaac Newton or Einstein could tell you if you don’t actually believe me). It’s just the fact of life being busier, more moving pieces happening at the same time, and the routine of everyday life creates predictability.
So with that being said, here we are again at the beginning of another new year…
The new year has cultural significance and us humans love chapterfying our lives. New Year’s Eve symbolizes the closing and New Year’s Day represents beginning.
New Year, New Me
Like me, I’m sure you want this next year to be the best one yet. And the best way to align yourself with this progression is to set goals (New Year’s Resolutions if you will).
Sure, it’s easy to plan “better” in theory . Work harder, complain less, make more money, eat better, get more excercise, yadda yadda yadda…
I became intentional about setting goals and holding myself accountable to completing those goals a few years ago (probably senior year of college).
It has really helped my overall well-being and has pushed the pace at which I have been able to accomplish things that mattered to me.
But how should someone, especially someone new to annual goal setting, go about planning for the new year and striving for the best version of themselves? This post will go over how to set realistic goals, how to track them, and how to know when to adjust.
Annual Self-Audits: Reflecting on Last Year and Projecting for the Next Year
Before you sit down and start jotting down whatever it is that comes to mind, it’s best to set some time aside with yourself. I like to plan out 2-3 hours on a weekend morning at the end of the year to look back on the previous year and reflect.
I spend some time looking at the previous year’s goals and seeing where I stood.
- What goals did I achieve?
- What goals did I fall short of? What prevented me from achieving these goals?
- Which goals were too easy?
- Which were too hard?
And then outside of the goals, I reflect about how I spent my time and where I got the best ROI (I’m not just referring to money when I say that).
- Where did I spend my time that made me happy?
- What did I do that was too much work for the outcome?
- Was there anything new that entered my life that I might want to explore further?
- Is there something I should completely stop doing?
These are all questions I am asking about and then actually writing down my thoughts. This personal self-audit helps to get ideas flowing for the new year. It is important to be 100% honest with yourself and not make excuses. This practice isn’t to make you feel guilty about what you didn’t do or overly proud for what you did do.
How to Actually Set Goals
Using the self-audit you completed, it’s time to get to work.
Here is a 5 step process that I like to follow that helps simplify the process. The overall objective with setting these goals is to push yourself without being unattainable, making them measurable in nature, and having them focused on things you can directly control.
1. Establishing ‘Goal Pillars’
You want to create 4-6 categories of goals that can help to organize what it is you want to focus on for the year. These will look different for everybody but here are some ideas if you need a little help:
- Work/Business Goals
- Financial Goals
- Health Goals
- Spiritual Goals
- Relationship Goals
- Family Goals
- Friend Goals
- Hobby Goals
- New Skill Goals
- Travel Goals
The possibilities are truly infinite. The objective here is just to make it clear what it is you’re focused on for the new year and keep everything tidy.
Again, I personally like to do 4-6 pillars to keep things from being overwhelming or unmanageable. You can stretch up to 7 or 8, but I wouldn’t recommend doing more than that.
2. Filling in ‘Focus Goals’ Within These Pillars
Now that you have your buckets, it’s time to work on filling them. Here are some examples using some of the goal pillars listed above:
- Work/Business Goals –> get a new job, get promoted, gain additional experience
- Financial Goals –> increase net worth, pay off debt, budget for and track expenses, build up emergency fund
- Health Goals –> work out consistently, new diet, reduce/eliminate alcohol consumption, start doing yoga
- Spiritual Goals –> go to service, become more involved in the church, read religious literature, express gratitude
- Relationship Goals –> go on more dates, become a better partner, listen more
- Family Goals –> initiate more communication, plan more family visits, ask for more advice
- Friend Goals –> explore new friendships, cut out toxic friendships, have more vulnerable conversations
- Hobby Goals –> play the piano more, improve cooking skills, run a half-marathon
- New Skill Goals –> learn how to juggle, learn how to code, learn how to make videos
- Travel Goals –> plan your dream trip, take more weekend trips, explore your current surroundings
This step is just focusing on big picture of what it is you want. Think more about the end result and not the actual action steps. We’re also avoiding any concrete quantitative figures in this step.
You want to be able to look at this part at the end of the year and say “I made new friends this year” or “I got in better physical shape”. The next step will look at how you will go about achieving these things.
3. Generating ‘Execution Goals’ That Are Measurable and Realistic
So now that you know what you want, let’s look how to get there with realistic measurables. Part of this step comes from looking at the previous year(s) again.
For example, I set an execution goal to read 5 books this past year (I am not a reader at all). For context, this goal stemmed out of the ‘brain development’ goal pillar and ‘focus goal’ was to read more books. I literally completed the fifth book in December. So if I wanted to continue a “read more” goal, I’m not going to jump up to reading 25 books for the year all of a sudden.
Instead, I try to focus on 10-30% increases, depending on what it is and what the previous number was. A good number for the new year might be 7 books to read—progression from the last year without degrading any self-confidence I might have. Just as was the case in my morning routine blog post, momentum is key.
Different goals require different measurements. If you are someone who really hasn’t done much running, the odds of you actually running a marathon are slim, not impossible but slim. You might want to focus on a 5k, or a 10k or half-marathon if you’re feeling real ambitious.
I am all about striving for the top and going all in. However, as we will talk about later on, you can always add, but you don’t want to be erasing goals that really weren’t attainable to begin with.
Make sure these execution goals actually make steps forward too and aren’t just “busy work for the sake of being busy”. These types of activities give the illusion of progress. I have found that producing a quality outcome measurable is much better than jamming in as many half-ass things you can.
4. Subdividing the Goals to Make Tracking Easier
At this point, you should have some goals that are realistic and measurable. You can now take those annual goals and can subdivide them into a quarter, a month, a week, etc. Annual goals are terrific but splitting them up tend to make them easier to track, easier to stay on track with, and easier to complete.
You can set up multiple check points too. Maybe have a quarterly target, a monthly benchmark, and weekly actions. Depending upon the goal, certain timeframes might make more sense to be on track.
For example, you might have read 2 books per quarter. Or you might have record expenses in your budget once a month. Or maybe it’s work out 3 times per week.
You might need to reverse engineer some things between steps 3 and 4, and that’s totally fine to make it work. The goal is to make these checkpoints visible and measurable.
5. Actually Following Through and Mid-Year Follow Up
After the goals are all set, it’s a matter of keeping track of progress and holding yourself accountable to follow through on these items.
You are a business. And businesses have quarterly meetings and mid-year reviews. Sit down once a quarter with yourself and see where you stand. If you are on-track, then good job, keep doing what you’re doing. If you are not, find out why it’s not getting done and make small adjustments if you need.
Adjustments are not failures. Rather, they are signs of awareness.
Things come up, life gets in the way, I get it. Adjustments can also be in the positive space, not just the negative. If you are cruising on one of your goals, consider upping the ante and taking it a step further.
Another thing just regards to wording your goals.
When I was working an internship at a small company, the goals set in meetings were always worded in the form of past tense action. Instead of saying “meal prep once a week on Sunday” you can reword this to be “meal prep completed every Sunday”. It’s subtle, but it sets the tone for the goal being completed in the future rather than a to-do. Give it a whirl.
Conclusion: The Ultimate Goal Isn’t Perfection—It’s to Be Intentional
You know when you’re asked on your birthday if you feel a year older? Well, you don’t because it’s just another day on the calendar.
Same thing goes for the new year. January 1 is just another day and it’s not going to magically change your life.
What does change things is deciding to live with intention—choosing what actually matters, where your energy goes, and how you respond when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Goals don’t need to be flashy or over-the-top. You need to make them honest and true to yourself and something you want. Don’t feel down about not being as ambitious as others might be. And on the flip side, don’t hold too much hubris in what you set out to do.
Remember the steps you took to set up the goals:
- Establish “goal pillars”
- Narrow down to “focus goals”
- Turn those into actionable “execution goals”
- Subdivide into trackable checkpoints
- Follow through with what you set and adjust as necessary
At the end of the day, none of these goals you write down matter if you don’t actually follow through. The difference between a “good year” and a forgettable one usually comes down to whether you pause, reflect, and realign. Or you just drift on autopilot.
Be excited for the new year and what it has to offer. Be excited to keep moving the ball forward. And, most importantly, be excited about writing your story. I know I sure am.
Happy New Year, from mypostgradlife.
—Will
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