Congratulations! You have made your New Year’s Resolutions for 2014, and you’re motivated and ready to see them through to the end! Homes.com wants to see you accomplish all of your goals and dreams this year. To help you achieve your resolutions, we are going to explore how to achieve a goal and how to set up a DIY New Year’s Resolution Goal Calendar.
Successful people have certain things in common. They all know how to define a problem, break it down into manageable steps, find solutions, and begin implementing those solutions within a restricted timeframe. Successful people also know how to revise and reevaluate a plan when it is clearly not working.
So what have you resolved to do in 2014? Perhaps some of the resolutions below match some of your own. According to a study from the University of Scranton in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, these are the top 10 New Year’s resolutions for 2014.
These are all fantastic goals, but they are too broad and not specific enough to easily be accomplished. To achieve these goals, we need to break them down into more obtainable and measurable steps. This is where our DIY New Year’s Resolution Calendar is going to help us!
How to Create a New Year’s Resolution Goal Calendar
Step 1: Define the problem.
Write down three manageable goals. I chose to work on the following:
- Lose weight.
- Get organized.
- Improve photography.
Step 2: Break the problem down into manageable and measurable steps.
Instead of simply stating, “I want to lose weight,” I need to create a goal that is measurable and time bound. “I will lose 15 pounds by June 1, 2014,” is a measurable goal within a specific time period. I can break my goal into an even more manageable chunk by making it a weekly goal, “I will lose 1 pound per week.” Let’s take my goal to get more organized. Instead of simply saying that I want to “get organized,” I will pick something to organize each week and assign myself weekly “to-do’s.” Breaking your goal down into small, manageable tasks is the key to success!
Step 3: Find solutions.
In this step, you want to brainstorm all of the different ways/steps you need to accomplish your goal. How are you going to achieve your goal each day/week? What specific behaviors are you going to do? For example, to lose a pound per week I am going to:
- Use MyFitness Pal app to track calories and stay within my daily calorie goal.
- Wear my FitBit daily and achieve my daily number of steps.
- Do Zumba 3x’s a week.
Step 4: Take action!
You are now ready to implement your plan and begin tracking your progress. Use a chalkboard and write down the days of the week. You will be tracking your progress towards your goal each week.
You can write your daily goals on sticky-notes, or you can type them up and print them out. I find the type and print method much easier. To print on sticky-notes you will need to print out the template. Simply click on the following link, open the file, and print it out: 3×3 sticky note template. Place your blank sticky-notes on the template. Type your desired daily goals within the template document. Place your sticky-note covered sheet in the printer and print.
Once printed, place your daily goals on your calendar as reminders of what you need to accomplish for the day. You can check off what you’ve accomplished or you can remove the sticky note for the day once your goals are accomplished. Keep daily tasks manageable and you will be accomplishing your list in no time!
Step 5: Reevaluate your plan and make sure it is working.
If your daily goals aren’t giving you the desired results, it’s time to reevaluate! Perhaps you need to change the time frame of your goal to something more manageable. Maybe you need to add another daily goal to begin seeing results. Don’t give up if you’re not seeing results! Instead, reassess your action steps and make the necessary accommodations.
