Happy 2025 Readers! In light of the new year, I’m sure many of you have begun thinking about your New Year’s Resolutions and goals you’d like to accomplish in 2025. I too, have written out my 2025 goals.
However, though most people will set a list of goals to accomplish by the end of every new year, many of these goals aren’t actually accomplished. Instead, we often lose motivation after the first few months of the year, and end up giving up and forgetting about our goals by the latter half of the year.
According to U.S News and World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be an estimated 80% with most people losing their resolve and motivation just a few weeks into February.
So, this year, I wanted to share some tips and tricks to help you accomplish your New Year’s Resolutions that have worked for me in the past.
1 – Set Realistic Goals
The biggest mistake that people make when setting New Year’s Resolutions is making them too unrealistic. Though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with dreaming big, setting overly ambitious goals can often lead to burnout and unnecessary dissatisfaction.
For example, it may not be realistic to set the goal to make $1,000,000 by the end of the year if your current income is $10,000. Though it is possible, because this goal is on the unrealistic side, it can be easy for you to feel unhappy about not reaching the goal even if you’ve made significant progress. Instead, a more realistic goal may be to make $50,000-$100,000 by the end of the year.
By setting a more realistic goal, you set yourself up for success, as you are far more likely to accomplish it.
2 – Set Measurable Goals
Another common mistake when setting New Year’s Resolutions is making the goals too abstract.
For example, the goal of “improving at math” or another school subject is incredibly hard to measure. How will improvement be measured? How much improvement counts towards the goal? Instead, a better goal that targets the same problem would be to increase your math grade by 5%, or be able to solve 5 mental math problems in 10 minutes.
By setting measurable goals, it becomes easier to track your progress and have a better idea of what you’re working towards.
3 – Break Big Goals Down Into Smaller Habits
The easiest way to hold yourself accountable to your New Year’s Resolutions is by breaking them down into small tasks that you can work on every day.
For example, if your New Year’s Resolution is to improve your Math grade by 5%, then your small habit could be doing 3 practice questions every day. You could also stack multiple small habits together, such as doing 5 mental math drills and then moving on to 3 practice questions.
By creating these small habits, you set measurable milestones, making it easier to accomplish your goals, as you know exactly what to do every day.
4 – Revisit Your Goals Monthly
One of the most common but easily preventable reasons why people don’t accomplish their New Year’s Resolutions is that they simply forget about them!
This is especially true if you have many New Year’s Resolutions – it can be easy to lose track of them by the time it’s April or June!
A quick, implementable solution to this problem is to set a date every month to revisit and review your resolutions. I like setting the first of every month as this “review date”, as it allows me to start the month with a clear idea of what I need to accomplish.
5 – Make A Priority List For Your Goals
Within our New Year’s goals, some are more important to us than others. For example, it may be more important to you to work consistently this year than to radically improve your grades even if these are both of these goals are on your New Year’s resolutions.
Given that it is incredibly hard to follow through with all of our New Year’s Resolutions, especially if we are ambitious and have many, prioritizing 1-2 goals that are most important to us makes it more likely that we work towards what we really care about the most.
This is especially useful in the latter half of 2025, as if many of our goals are still unaccomplished, then we can resolve to just accomplish the most important goals, and still end the year feeling strong and satisfied.
Hopefully by implementing these tips and working hard, we can all accomplish our goals by the end of 2025 and come out of the year stronger than we started. I wish you all luck in accomplishing your New Year’s Resolutions, and let’s all encourage each other to become the best version of ourselves this year!
So, what are you waiting for? Get cracking on those resolutions!
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/struggling-new-years-resolutions-track/story?id=96173041#:~:text=According%20to%20research%2C%20Rook%20Williams,U.S%20News%20and%20World%20Report.