New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Here’s what to do instead

When the calendar flips to January 1, millions of people around the world will spend a few minutes — or maybe even a few hours — writing down their New Year’s resolutions. 

By February, 64% of them will have abandoned their goals, according to researchers at Edith Cowan University. 

Sound familiar? If you recognise this scenario, you know all too well that standard New Year’s resolutions don’t have staying power.  

So, instead of getting stuck in hope addiction, where you cling to an aspirational idea without giving the why and how much thought, this year, embrace a more considered approach. Give yourself 31 days to design the rest of 2023. 

I call this New Year planning strategy ‘31 for 365’ and I use it with all my high-performing executive and business-owner clients.  

This process encourages you to ditch the notion of planning your year in 30 minutes and instead recommends you take the entire month of January to set up for a year of success.

If that sounds like a long time, ask yourself this: why wouldn’t you give yourself 31 days to design a meaningful plan for the next 365 that will support you in achieving your 2023 vision?  

Isn’t your success worth allowing yourself 31 days to get clear and focused for the year ahead, as opposed to spending an afternoon scribbling down a few half-hearted goals that are more hopeful than helpful?

Consider who you need to be in 2023

One of the crucial keys to the 31 for 365 approach is considering not only what you want to do in 2023, but who you need to be in order to support that goal. 

When you understand that who you’re being matters as much as what you’re doing, you have the ingredients for sustainable success.

This means digging deep to uncover what routines and habits drain you or hold you back, and which ones allow you to show up as your best self more often. These become a toolkit that you can lean on when the year throws disruption and detours your way. 

Ready to experiment with my 31 for 365 strategy this January? Follow these steps across the month to set up your best year yet. 

1. Start with reflection

   The 31 for 365 strategy starts with reflection — reviewing what worked and what didn’t work in the year that was.

   Perhaps your productivity was hampered by endless meetings, or your goal was derailed by ineffective or incomplete planning. Maybe you kept putting off that mini-break or routinely avoided your nightly wind-down routine. What could you do differently next year?

   Think about what felt good, too. These are the habits to embrace in the year ahead, whether it’s going for a morning walk or adopting an empowering change in mindset, like pausing before you say ‘yes’ to every request for your time.

   A great way to reflect is to try a braindump, using post-its, a notepad or the virtual whiteboard tool Miro. I ask clients to note down what worked well and what didn’t as a key insight activity. We often think about these things, but the power is in getting them all out on paper and observing them with a little distance, with the goal of opening up objectivity — and options.

2. Step into visualisation

   Next, allow yourself to visualise what you want to achieve in the year ahead or even three to five years from now.

   Don’t underestimate the power of creating a vision board as the first step here. Yes, it’s a bit woo-woo, but collating images that represent your goals, whether they’re digital or the old-school magazine cut-outs, really helps to clarify what you want to achieve.

   The process of creating a vision board allows you to slow down and spend time considering what could be possible for you — and get really excited about that.

   We often default to writing the solution to our perceived problems before we consider the opportunities available in any scenario. Making a vision board is a fantastic way to allow for more divergent thinking, which opens up greater possibilities.

3. Make a practical plan

   Once you have a vision that excites you, you can transition into designing practical, bite-sized steps that bring your inspiration into creation.

   I love the US Navy SEALs quote, ‘Slow is smooth, smooth is fast’. It’s a great mantra to keep in mind as you approach your 2023 planning.

   My top tip here? Don’t plan to do everything in the next 30 days — get great at understanding what’s really possible with your time and step it out.

   Build your capacity to combine logic and desire: logically you know you can’t do 50 things in a day, but your desire is to get as much done as possible. Unfortunately, our brains are great at dismissing obvious facts in favour of convenient truths, and over time this is a sure-fire pathway to frustration and burnout.

   To stay anchored in the facts of what you actually have the capacity to take on, break your goals down into 90-day plans that can be scheduled into monthly and weekly steps.

   This allows you to take stock and review how you’re progressing every quarter, giving you an opportunity to refine your processes and timelines along the way to suit the dynamic conditions you’re working under.

4. Write your to-do and to-be lists

   Your weekly to-do list of what needs to get done to achieve your goals is, of course, important. But what’s equally critical is who you need to be in order to do all the things.

   Embracing the connection between being and doing allows for real growth in your vertical development — that is, your self-awareness, emotional intelligence, attitude and mindset. It also helps to recharge your mental tank when you’re running close to empty.

   To ensure you’re making room for who you need to be in 2023, take some time to think about the habits, practices and behaviours you could include in your plan, and actually schedule them in.

   That might mean revisiting your mindset: if you’re constantly talking about never having enough time, start dedicating space to a Sunday session to plan the week ahead and be intentional about what you’re putting into the weekly container. Or, try consciously shifting your focus from all the things you’re not doing to all the things you are doing to reach your goals with a journalling practice.

   You might also need to identify what your default procrastination and unhelpful habits tend to be (scrolling on social media; working late every night), and what habits you could change or adopt to cultivate your high-performance mode more often. Remember, it’s not just about recognising what’s unhelpful, but taking action, too.

5. The final fail-safe shift

   If you’ve followed these steps, by the end of January you should be getting close to designing a detailed (and exciting!) plan for the year ahead.

   A game-changing final check to set yourself up for success is being willing to consider with honesty what could derail you in 2023. What are the things that would put this incredible plan at risk?

   Take a look at everything that could get in the way of your success — including what’s tripped you up in the past. Write them down and spend time reviewing these actions, habits and challenges. From that place, ask yourself: ‘How much of this am I doing or allowing right now?’

   When you have the answers, you’ll be armed with insight into the kind of hurdles you’re likely to face in the next 11 months, and the awareness of the habits you need to shift for success. This is a great place to take action — stop doing or allowing those things that trip you up.

Of course, you can’t plan for every hurdle — there will always be a curveball. But knowing what’s likely to get in the way can help you navigate the biggest potholes and stay on track for a year of success.