Happy New Year!

This is the time of year when people reflect on the previous year and plan the year to come. New Year’s resolutions are our annual personal performance evaluation, an after action review built into the fabric of our culture.

Here’s my process for setting goals for the New Year: When I consider 2015, in what ways did things go well? What could be improved? And how can I use this feedback to (re)direct my goals for the coming year?

As I discussed in my previous post on Flow, clear goals are the first necessary step toward optimal experience. You need to know what you want to do! Since you’re the one making the goals, consider this an opportunity to design the life you want.

A few days ago, I took about an hour (procrastinating rather than writing this post) and jotted down some of my own goals (resolutions) for the coming year.

I take issue with a lot of resolutions. They take on too much, attempt to correct bad behaviors and habits in one fell swoop, and end up feeling like limiting obligations. It’s not useful to try to be someone you’re not.

I’m not going to stick with anything that is out of line with who I am. If I am going to do anything successfully it better be aligned with who I am and the sorts of things that I already do. Any new habit that I adopt needs to help me achieve my goals, or why the hell am I doing it?

When I thought about what was actually important to me, I could really only come up with few broad categories:

• Family and Friends
• Health and Wellbeing
• Home and Yard
• My Work

For this year, I have a few specific goals in each of these categories. For instance, my climbing goals, which fall under Health and Wellbeing, are to complete a couple routes I was really close to sending last year. That’s about as specific as it gets. And—this is key—it’s also realistic. What am I actually going to do this year?

Once I set my larger goals for the year, I break them down into smaller monthly, weekly, and daily tasks (mini goals) that slowly build me up and get me one step closer to my larger goals. How can I train or eat or sleep better today to get me closer to the send?

Hopefully, if you correctly plumb your goals and tasks, everything that you do in a day should flow toward your larger purpose, the categories that are important to you. (I hope they’re important, since you’re the one who picked them!)

If you find yourself doing things off your list, you should see if what you are doing supports the larger goal(s) or category. If you think it does, add it to the plan. If what you are doing doesn’t support any of your stated goals or categories for the year, then it may be a distraction. Go back to the plan you created and get back on the program.

Write down your goals. Tell someone (see Accountability Buddy). You are more likely to stay committed to your goals (resolutions) if you declare them out loud or in writing than if you just think them quietly to yourself.

Making thoughtful New Year’s resolutions can create clarity of goals, purpose, and meaning, and help us draw the road map to what we want. So consider taking a little time and deciding what it is that you want for yourself this year.