Failproof Your Resolutions

A comprehensive guide to achieving your wildest goals in 2017 and beyond

Almost everybody’s set a New Year’s resolution at some point.

And almost everybody who’s set a New Year’s resolution has had the experience of falling short with one. As it turns out, in any given year, less than 10% of people successfully follow through with their resolutions.

If you work out at a gym, you’ve probably noticed that it’s already getting a little less crowded than it was in the first week of January.

Not even a month into the year, and people are starting to slip.

Why does it have to be so hard?

It’s a problem that extends past New Year’s resolutions and extends to goal-setting more broadly.

It’s not that complicated. Really, there are three big reasons why people to achieve their goals :

Goals are selected poorly Goals are designed poorly Goals are implemented poorly

At least, that’s been my personal experience.

For me, every year, there are at least one or two key resolutions or goals that slip.

Enough is enough.

To help myself and my readers, I’ve put together a guide that synthesizes scientific research, observed best practice, and personal experience to optimize goal selection, design, and implementation.

Throughout, I’ll be taking one of my own goals in 2017 goal — gaining more subscribers to my blog — and refining it through the frameworks detailed below by means of illustration.

At the end of the guide, I’ve included a link to download goal setting worksheets based on the principles and frameworks discussed.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Selecting “stretch goals” to increase motivation and accelerate success

One of my favorite takeaways from Tim Ferriss’s “Tools of Titans” came from his interview with noted (and notorious) venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who recommended:

“If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?”

It’s this type of thinking that is at the heart of stretch goals. Stretch goals require you to extend beyond what may initially seem reasonable or possible. As Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business explains:

“Numerous academic studies have examined the impact of stretch goals, and have consistently found that forcing people to commit to ambitious, seemingly out-of-reach objectives can spark outsized jumps in innovation and productivity.”

Stretch goals force you to think more deeply about how to accomplish your goal, and spur more out-of-the-box thinking. Ambitious targets force you to think more deeply about what drives your behavior and what drives the outcomes you want to achieve. They also encourages experimentation and risk-taking.

Perhaps most importantly, stretch goals unlock more energy. In a 2011 article published in the Academy of Management Review Business Journal, a group of researchers noted that “by forcing a substantial elevation in collective aspirations, stretch goals can shift attention to possible new futures and perhaps spark increased energy…”

Think about it — what’s more exciting: losing 5 pounds, or six-pack abs? Which one is going to drive you to work harder?

Take the example of my blog. Right now, I have under 100 subscribers, and a reasonable, “incremental” goal would be to aim for 500 subscribers by the end of the year. Instead, I’m setting a stretch goal of 5,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

This will force me to write differently, market differently, and structure my time differently. It will force me to take chances. And chasing that ambitious outcome will give me more energy than shooting for something more modest.

Designing goals with the SMART framework to increase adherence

For all their benefits, stretch goals on their own are not enough to drive success. In fact, without the right goal design, stretch goals can be counter-productive. As Duhigg explains, stretch goals “can cause panic and convince people that success is impossible because the goal is too big. There is a fine line between an ambition that helps people achieve something amazing and one that crushes morale.”

That’s where SMART goal design comes to the rescue.

SMART is an acronym for:

Specific

Measurable

Actionable

Realistic

Time-bound

Making sure your goal fits each of these criteria significantly increases your chances of achieving it.

Let’s dig into each of these categories a little bit deeper.

Specific. The goal must be clearly defined in order for you to effectively put together a plan to execute against the goal. For example, “growing my blog” is not specific. “Increase the number of subscribers on my list to 5000” is.

Measurable. You need to be able to definitively measure whether or not you’ve accomplished your goal, as well as how you’re tracking toward accomplishing that goal.

Actionable. There need to be actions you can take to execute on your goal. Otherwise, it’s just a wish.

Realistic. Even when setting stretch goals, you need to have a realistic plan for taking action toward it. Speaking to my own stretch goal: while 5000 subscribers quite punchy, I’ve broken it down into specific, realistic actions — writing 5+ hours per week, and promoting content 5+ hours per week. If I can do those things well, I should be able to publish 50 articles in 2017, and if each attracts an average of 100 subscribers, then I’ll hit my goal by the end of the year.

Time-bound: Last but not least, the goal needs to have a deadline. This forces action, creates a sense of urgency, and demands day-to-day consistency. If my goal was to gain 5000 subscribers, full-stop, I wouldn’t feel the same pressure to write and publish articles as I do by setting a hard end-of-year deadline.

Why does SMART goal setting work so well? As Duhigg explains:

“Goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires — or shifting that goal.”

The clearer your plan, the simpler it will be to follow, and the more likely you will be to succeed.

Reconciling SMART goals with stretch goals

Just like how stretch goals without SMART design can leave people demoralized by the scope of the goal, SMART goals outside the stretch goal framework can hinder achievement.

In Smarter Faster Better, Duhigg noted the curious story of an office manager creating SMART goals for activities as trivial as ordering office supplies:

Specific: Order staplers, pens, and desk calendars

Measurable: By June

Achievable, Realistic: Place order on Feb 1, request update on March 15

Timebound: Complete by June

According to Duhigg, without an ambitious stretch goal, SMART goals “can cause [a] person to have tunnel vision, to focus more on expanding effort to get immediate results.”

On the surface, the stretch and SMART goal frameworks may seem contradictory. After all, stretch goal setting advocates setting goals that go beyond what seems immediately reasonable or possible, and SMART design demands that goals be actionable and realistic.

How do you get the best of both worlds?

First, start with your stretch goal. Then, figure out a way to apply it within the SMART framework. Attempting to force an “unrealistic” goal into a “realistic” framework helps unlock the creativity that will enable you to execute on your goal. And if your goal is truly a stretch one, you may find yourself regularly adapting your SMART framework as you experiment with and identify new ways to achieve your goal.

Another helpful way to leverage stretch and SMART goal setting together is to set an ambitious stretch goal, and aim to achieve it via SMART subgoals. Duhigg provides a helpful example:

Regardless of your goal or resolution, the stretch and SMART frameworks should always be used in tandem, not in isolation. While it takes a little bit more thought and advanced planning, it’s the best way to capture the benefits and minimize the downside of each framework.

Implementing your goals: 7 strategies to maximize your chances of success

The first two sections covered how to select goals that stretch you, and how to design them using SMART principles.

What about actually executing against your goal?

Planning is one thing; taking action is quite another.

Below, I’ve detailed 7 strategies you can use to take more effective action.

1. Don’t be a “donkey”: Cut less important goals to make room for more important ones

In Tools of Titans, entrepreneur Derek Sivers adapts the fable of Burdian’s ass to illustrate a key point about goal-setting:

“You’ve probably heard the fable…about a donkey who is standing halfway between a pile of hay and a bucket of water. He just keeps looking left to the hay, and right to the water, trying to decide. Hay or water, hay or water? He’s unable to decide so he eventually falls over and dies of both hunger and thirst. A donkey can’t think of the future. If he did, he’d realize he could clearly go first to drink the water, then go eat the hay.”

New Years is a time of unbridled optimism. But it’s this very optimism that sets us up for failure, as our inner-donkey tries to take on too much and ends up not getting anything done at all.

This phenomenon explains why Warren Buffett recommends that people write down the top 25 things they want to do, in order, and make items 6–25 their “avoid-at-all-costs” list. It’s your medium-priority goals that are most likely to submarine your chances of delivering on your high-priority goals.

So even though we’re almost at the end of January, it’s A-OK to kick some of your resolutions to the curb for this year in order to focus more on those that matter most. Remember, life is long, and you can do it all — just not all at once. So for now, concentrate all of your energies exclusively on what’s most important this year.

2. Develop habits to support your goals

Habits are the reason why everybody brushes their teeth and nobody flosses. One has been habitualized; the other has not.

Not that you can make accomplishing your stretch goals as easy as brushing your teeth. But the principle still stands: habits make everything easier.

How exactly do you form a habit?

Habits are formed via consistent sequences of a trigger, an action, and a reward. Consider brushing your teeth before bed:

Trigger: Getting ready for bed

Action: Brush teeth

Reward: The clean, minty feeling of brushing your teeth

You can define your own triggers and rewards as a means of creating habits for the actions that will drive you toward success in your goals. For example, to build my blog, I’ve built a habit of daily evening writing:

Trigger: Finish eating dinner, put on headphones, start “writing playlist” on Spotify

Action: Write for 30+ minutes

Reward: Watch a fun video on the internet, or play a video game (I’m a sucker for FIFA).

The beauty of habits is that you create a flywheel effect. Given a finite amount of “willpower”, the less willpower you can extend per unit of effort toward your goal, and the more you’ll be able to accomplish in service of your goal.

3. Leverage the pyramid strategy to break your stretch goals into achievable “microgoals”

One of the easiest ways to make progress on a long-term goal is to break it down into a series of smaller goals. Then, break down those smaller goals into even smaller goals, until you are left with “microgoals” that are easily achievable, and directly in service of your large, ambitious goal.

I call this the “pyramid strategy.” Your “top level” goal, the top of the pyramid, is supported by the blocks directly under it, which are supported by the blocks under them, all the way until you get to the base.

For my goal to gain 5000 subscribers, part of the “pyramid” might look like as follows:

Yearly goal: 5000 subscribers Quarterly goal: 500 in Q1, 1000 in Q2, 1500 in Q3, 2000 in Q4 January: Publish 3 posts that bring in 200 subscribers Week of 1/15/16: Finish, publish, and promote “resolutions and goals” post Sunday, 1/8: Finish rough draft of goals post.

Here’s why I find the pyramid strategy helpful:

First, it provides the opportunity for small wins that help build momentum and keep you motivated.

Second, it forces you to approach your goals realistically. If you can’t break down a massive goal into smaller, more attainable subgoals, than you need to consider taking a different approach.

Building the pyramids: The mother of all stretch goals

Like building a pyramid, stretch goals can feel impossible on the surface. But just like with the ancient Egyptian pyramid builders, the key is to tackle your goal one “block” at a time.

4. Identify your “why”

“He who has a ‘why’ can endure almost any ‘how.’”

Friedrich Nietzsche

For each of your goals, you must be very clear about what your “why” is. You must feel it viscerally. For any significant undertaking, there will be times where things get very tough. The stronger your “why,” the more resilient you’ll be in the face of adversity.

The “why” for driving readers to my blog? Balancing a desire for work-life balance with my personal ambition and desire to make a big impact on the world has forced me to continually push the envelope when it comes to personal efficiency. The thought that I could help of others struggling to stay in control of their work with what I’ve already learned, and what I’m continuing to learn, is extremely energizing.

Whenever I’ve faced adversity along the way, returning to my “why” has been the single most helpful thing in keeping me on track.

It is impossible to understate the power of having a strong “why” behind your goals. If you’re struggling to find that strong “why,” that motivation that will keep you pushing in the face of adversity, it’s probably advisable to give up this goal in favor of one that’s more important. We have a finite amount of willpower. Spend it to get things done that truly matter to you.

5. Identify your “why not,” and plan around it

After you identify your “why”, identify your “why not” — define the behaviors, obstacles, and excuses that are most likely to prevent you from reaching your goal. Planning for how you’ll respond to adversity in advance can significantly mitigate its impact. As Dr. Peter Gollwitzer and Dr. Paschal Sheeran observed in their goal research meta-analysis, “implementation intentions” — plans for how to address when situations go awry, have a significant impact on goal attainment.

What does successful “planning” look like?

One method is to perform a root-cause analysis of what has historically led you to fail with your goals, and address the problems at their source. For example, I’ve found that when I have low energy at the end of the day, I’m much more likely to procrastinate on writing. Knowing this, I’ve identified and eliminated behaviors that have contributed to low end-of-day energy, like getting less sleep, or drinking too much coffee earlier in the day.

You can also create conditional “if-then” plans for addressing obstacles as they arise. So, sometimes I don’t have time to write in the evening because I worked late, or had errands to run. Knowing this, I’ve built a plan where IF I get home from work late and don’t have time to write for my blog, THEN I will set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier to make up the writing time in the morning.

You can’t assume that things are going to go perfectly. The more you proactively anticipate and plan around what obstacles you might face, the more effective you’ll be at dealing with them.

6. Make your environment work in your favor

Consider identifying ways you can change your environment to make it easier to follow through with your goals and resolutions. If your goal is to lose weight, you could alter your environment by removing junk food from your house, so that it’s not as easy to eat. Or, you could join a gym located next to your apartment or your office, so that it’s easier for you to work out.

One of my favorite tactics to alter my “environment” is to use applications like Rescuetime to block access to distracting sites while I’m writing. By removing distraction as a temptation lurking in the background, it becomes easier to focus.

Recall — you have a finite amount of willpower available to allocate toward accomplishing your goals. So the more work you can get your environment to do on your behalf, the more willpower you’ll have in service of your goal.

7. Raise the stakes

My favorite author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, had a curious writing ritual that he employed to great effect throughout his prolific career. As soon as he sold a new novel, he would immediately go to the casino and proceed to squander all his earnings. After sending himself back into poverty, Dostoevsky had no choice but to quickly produce his next work, or starve.

In The 33 Strategies of War, author Robert Greene calls this the “death ground” strategy. The more your back is pressed against the wall, the more motivated and capable you become. Writes Greene:

“Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources — if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through. Place yourself on ‘death ground,’ where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.”

While I’m not advocating you throw yourself into poverty like Dostoevsky, there are many ways you can raise the stakes with your own goals.

First, put your social credibility on the line. If you’re setting a target for yourself or your team at work, publicize it to as many people as possible — maximizing the negative impact on yourself if you fail to follow through with it.

Looking to lose weight in time for summer? Share your goal with all of your friends on Facebook, with a commitment to share swimsuit photos in the summer.

Second, consider using a service like Stikk, a goal-setting platform that allows you to add financial stakes to your goals and resolutions. Accomplish your goal? You get your money back. Fail? Your money goes towards an organization that you’ve selected as a disincentive toward failure, like the American Nazi Party.

Talk about a disincentive.

Join the 9%: Failproof your goals and resolutions

I know I’ve given you a lot to digest. But I would be selling both of us short if I tried to keep this short and sweet, because let’s face it — accomplishing meaningful stretch goals is HARD! There’s a reason less than only 9% of people actually follow through on their New Year’s resolutions. Change doesn’t come easy, so it’s important to take of every advantage you can in order to maximize your chances of success.

It’s so common to fail when we set ambitious goals for ourselves. It reveals a painful gap between the person we are and the person we want to be. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

With a more deliberate approach to goals and resolutions, I’m committed to doing exactly that, and making 2017 my best year yet. I hope this guide helps you do the same.