How to set goals for 2021 that you'll ACTUALLY achieve
It’s a New Year. Which means New Year’s Resolutions, lots of goal-setting and often a lot of pressure to start snazzy new habits!
If you’ve ever set New Year’s Resolutions before, you probably fall into one of two camps: first, setting goals and resolutions that are completely unrealistic and failing within the first 3 days; or second, setting goals and resolutions that are achievable, but setting so many that you fail almost as fast anyway.
But that’s what we’re here to help with.
Ditch the overwhelm, stop setting yourself up for failure, and join us as we set goals that you’ll actually achieve!
Step One: Think about your why
One of the biggest reasons for failing to do anything is motivation. You know, that feeling that you try desperately to cling on to, but that sometimes disappears inexplicably despite the looming deadline.
Before even thinking about your goals for 2021, you need to get clear on your why.
Why do you want to achieve this thing? Is it because you think you should, or is it because it actually means something to you? Finding out what is intrinsically motivating for you will really help to develop goals that matter to you, and that you will actually be able to achieve.
For example, if you’re considering setting a New Year’s Resolution of going for a run 3 times a week, ask yourself why. Is it because you want to develop healthier habits and you know that running helps your mental health? Or is it just because everyone you’re following on Instagram has started running and you feel left out? If it’s the latter, ditch it! There is no point in trying to achieve a goal that you’re only doing for flimsy external reasons; you need to find what really matters to you if you want to be successful at sticking to your guns!
Step Two: Think about the year as a whole
How do you want your life to look this time next year? How do you want to feel about your life in a year’s time? What do you want to keep from last year and what do you want to get rid of?
Think about your longer term vision. Although it can be difficult, especially at the moment, to plan more than a few days or weeks in advance, having an overall picture of what you want your life to look like in a year will really help you to pin down what it is that needs to change for you to achieve that outcome.
Try free-writing around what you want your days to look like in a week’s time: start from the moment you wake up in the morning, what you spend your day doing, what your evening time looks like - try to get as detailed as possible about the ‘perfect’ day you want to achieve in a year’s time, and then you can work backwards from there to identify the steps you need to take to achieve that goal.
For example, if your goal is to be working in a graduate scheme this time next year, think about exactly what that looks like for you: where are you living? Who are you living with? Are you commuting into an office or working from home? What do you spend your free time doing?
Writing out an ideal day or week of your future life can really help to solidify exactly what matters to you - and as we already know, your goals are much more likely to be achieved if they really matter!
Step Three: Assess where you are now & what you achieved last year
You now know where you want to be in a year’s time - and why you want to be there. So now it’s time to look at your life and how much you’ve achieved in the last year.
The key here is to focus on the growth you’ve achieved in the last year: what have you done that has moved you a step closer to where you wanted to be? What hurdles have you overcome? What issues have come up for you that have made your progress more difficult?
Try to be introspective here and identify anything that has made it more difficult to achieve your goals than you might have expected. Perhaps you’ve struggled with procrastination when it comes to hitting your daily reading goals: why do you think that is? Is it because there’s not enough time in your day because you’ve crammed too many other things in, or is it just because Netflix is always more appealing? The more you can identify the blocks you’ve felt this year, the better you can plan to overcome them for 2021 - giving you a better chance of hitting your goals!
Step Four: Setting your 2021 goals
At this point, you should be clear on the following:
Your overall vision for your life this time next year (step two)
Why you want to achieve those goals (step one) and what has hindered your progress in the past (step three)
Now comes the fun part! Taking everything you’ve noted down or thought about in the first three steps, it’s now time to break down your yearly vision into more manageable chunks.
And manageable is the key word here: focus on what you can realistically achieve this year, making sure you think back to step three and any blocks you found when working on your goals last year. Set goals that are achievable and make you feel a sense of accomplishment once you’ve achieved them. Regular positive reinforcement of your daily successes will compound over time, making your longer term goals much more achievable too. Build positive relationships with your habits by making them fun or rewarding, rather than viewing them as a chore. If you need a little extra help with habits and how to make them stick, we’d recommend reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits or listening to Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast episode, ‘The Secret to Making New Habits Stick’.
Look back at your ideal day or week that you want to achieve in a year: how many elements of that day are different to your average day now? If your goal is to graduate, get a new job and move into your own home, it’s time to start thinking about each element that contributes to those actions.
For example, if your ideal future depends on you graduating with a 1st class degree, how much time do you need to spend each week studying? Set yourself a goal of studying (distraction free!) for 5, 10 or 20 hours per week - whatever is best for you. If your goal is to save enough money for a deposit on a flat, how much money do you want to save in a year? What does that equate to each month? And how can your daily actions contribute to that target? More than likely, one less takeaway a week or making your morning coffee at home instead of visiting the local coffee shop will help you towards your target.
Make your monthly or weekly goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based - otherwise you’ll get to November 2021 and realise you’ve made no progress at all! It’s important to identify small, ideally daily actions that make your goals more achievable. The more regularly you can take small action to contribute to your goal, the more likely you are to achieve it.
Break your yearly vision down into:
Monthly SMART goals
Daily actions that contribute directly to your SMART goals
And then make sure you’re reminded of these goals regularly! Write them out and put them somewhere that you’ll see them regularly (such as the bathroom mirror!) - it’ll help keep your mind on track and remind you why you’re taking action every single day.
Step Five: Measure, adjust, repeat
One of the biggest reasons people fail to hit their big goals is because they set them and forget them! And it’s one of the easiest things to fix: simply make a habit of checking in with your goals regularly and put them somewhere you’ll see often.
Some people like to make a vision board for their yearly goals, so that they have a regular visual reminder of the direction they want their life to be headed. Others simply write down their goals and stick them on the wall where they’ll see them every day. Whatever way works for you, do something to keep those goals at the forefront of your mind. Soak them in subconsciously every day, and you’ll feel much more motivated with your daily actions.
You can also try ‘habit stacking’, where you add on another habit at the end of an existing action. For example, if you’re good at studying for an hour undistracted but not so good at doing exercise, commit to doing 10 minutes of exercise at the end of your study session. Even better, get your workout gear ready and in your line of sight while you’re studying, so that you have even fewer excuses not to follow through with your goal!
Another thing that’s hugely important, especially if your yearly goals feel particularly ambitious, is to block out some time every month (or every quarter, minimum) to assess what has worked well for you and what hasn’t in the past month.
Take some time to sit down with your original notes from the goal setting process and check in with your progress. If you’re on track, great - keep going, and if you find yourself consistently beating your targets there’s nothing wrong with upping them for a little extra challenge! If you’re not on track, revisit your notes from step three - what’s stopping you from achieving your goals? If it’s procrastination, it’s often due to a weakness of your why, so go back to step one and remind yourself of the bigger picture and how your daily, weekly and monthly goals and actions are vitally important to your progress.
If you feel like your monthly goals are too ambitious now that you’re trying them, or something has changed in your life that makes you unable to achieve them, readjust. The worst thing you can do is to simply abandon your goals! If your vision or current life changes, simply readjust your goals to be more realistic. Don’t abandon them, or you’ll never make any long-term progress!
If you’ve tried to do daily yoga at 6am every morning for the past 3 Januarys, but failed every time, it’s perhaps not the best goal to set again this year! Chances are, you’re not intrinsically motivated to achieve that goal - and that’s not going to change just because you try for the fourth time now!
If you keep attempting a previously-failed goal in the exact same way, you will fail again. If it is intrinsically important to you and you do want to try again, think about the things you could change this time around to help you actually stick to it. Taking the daily yoga goal again, perhaps your ‘why’ is that it really benefits your mental and physical health, so you do want to achieve it. Why not try shifting from a rigid goal of daily yoga at 6am to a more flexible goal of doing yoga twice a week in your lunchbreak? That’s a much more manageable goal, and, if you stick to twice a week to start with, you’ll be able to reach your daily goal a little further down the line!
So that’s it! How to set goals for 2021 that you’ll actually stick to. Be clear on your vision, your why and your daily actions, and start to make long-lasting habits to keep you on track. If you’re why is strong and your goals realistic, you’re much more likely to succeed!
