Take a Thoughtful Approach to Your Goals: Don’t Rush Them in the New Year

The new year is upon us, and we all have visions of a great year and accomplishing a tremendous number of things. It’s a clean slate, and we are bursting with energy. But…as I’ve written before, just because the calendar changes doesn’t mean everything around you does as well. There is also no need to be completely bound to the calendar for your goals, either. The new year can help symbolize a new beginning, a fresh start if you will. It doesn’t have to mean everything starts that day, or else it can’t be done. Even well into January, you would be better served to spend more time with your goal planning instead of rushing to say you have something. Setting goals too quickly or arbitrarily comes with a set of risks that can undermine your chances of success and overall well-being.

Lack of Alignment

A key risk of setting hasty goals can be the potential lack of alignment with your core values and what you really need to accomplish in the coming months. If the goals do not fully resonate with you (long-term), they will undermine your ability to achieve them. This is how goals and resolutions end up getting dropped quickly in the year: not enough thought went into them, so the motivation and personal connection get lost.

Set Realistic Expectations

You may also find that quickly setting goals leads to unrealistic expectations. With the enthusiasm of this new year, it is easy to believe we can do more than is realistic quickly in the first month or two. Temper those, and really challenge yourself with the SMART framework. The ‘R’ for realistic is essential to spend time analyzing and ensuring that your timeline and desired outcome are aligned. Having an unrealistic goal can also serve as a demotivator for yourself and other parts of your goals.

Planning

Taking time to plan out your goals and how those fit into different parts of the year is also an important step to setting yourself up for success. Not only does it help ensure you’re being realistic, it will provide a roadmap to follow for the remainder of the year. It will guide you along and help identify where you are towards the desired outcome. Continuing to review and evaluate against this, can also help you keep your reality in check. Just because it seems reasonable now, having this map to refer to also enables you to change course if things or priorities need to change.

Finding Balance

Hasty goal-setting may also lead to neglecting personal development and internal growth. While external achievements are undoubtedly valuable, a holistic approach that considers both external accomplishments and internal well-being is key to long-term fulfillment. This can quickly lead to dissatisfaction and burnout. You do not want to overcommit yourself without understanding your true capacity and resources available at critical times. Using your planning calendar for the year as part of the goal setting process can assist in identifying busy times of the year. If you know you have a big vacation planned in mid-June, you need to plan accordingly before and after so you do not feel overwhelmed either leading up to the vacation or when you get back.

You can mitigate the risks of setting goals too quickly by not rushing to get things on paper or, worse, just trying to jump in. Take time, even if that is weeks, to reflect on what you need, want, and can achieve with your current situation. The journey is just as important as the destination, so be thoughtful and take care to use the upfront time productively.

The hardest thing to overcome sometimes is the calendar itself and implied outcomes of days, weeks, or months going by. We see the calendar change to a new year, so we believe everything must change right then. The calendar and your goals are yours. Yours to do with as it makes sense for you. Environmental, societal, and even peer pressures of being “ready for the new year” do not need to force you into a rush job of building your goals and your future. Invest the time you require, and it will pay back the valuable dividends that you are seeking.

How will you approach your goal setting for the new year?

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