What Goal-Setting Techniques Really Work?

If you your New Year's resolutions (or your goals chosen at any other time of year) are really important enough to you to try to keep, what can you do to make sure you achieve them? Psychological research has some suggestions:

• Goals need to be measurable or recognizable, that is, you need to be able to recognize success when you accomplish it. If you want to meet the person of your dreams, have some idea of what kind of person that would be (although it's usually not best to set your sights on a single, specific person). If you have a weight goal, imagine how you would feel either thinner or more completely bulked out, or both. A successful goal for saving money might be "I will not overdraft my account this year," or I will save enough to pay for gifts for the next holiday season in cash.
• Goals need to be specific enough that you can recognize success but flexible enough that you can deal with changing conditions. Psychologists call this principle "optimal heterophily," choosing goals that are different enough from your present condition to be satisfying but similar enough to your present condition that you don't stress out or burn out trying to achieve them.
• Expressing authentic positive emotions makes achieving goals easier. This is particularly true of goals you achieve with the help of others. People are more likely to continue helping you when they know they are doing the right thing.  Exaggerating positive benefits, however, is only helpful in dealing with people who direct your goals, that is, with your boss, psychologists have found.
• Choose goals you know you can achieve--but aren't achieving right now. Place your confidence in yourself, not in some mystical power around you to achieve what you want.

In practical terms, achieving your New Year's resolutions is more likely when you make your resolution about the journey, not the destination.

Setting your New Year's resolutions in terms of week to week or even day to day goals is more likely to result in success than choosing a single big goal for the year. Don't be like me and set a goal of running a half-marathon by the end of the year. Set a goal, for instance, of exercising three times a week and doing a little better each week. If you don't meet your goal for one week or one day, get back on track.

State your goals clearly enough that another person can understand them, and then use the buddy system to stick to plan. Plan for success. If your goal is to exercise more, for example, arrange your daily appointments and obligations so you have time to work out. 

Get an app for your resolutions to keep track of progress. And don't be afraid to reassess your resolutions as they year goes along, changing them, rather than abandoning them.

See Also: New Year, New You - 5 of the Best Diet Tips

The ability to get back on track is key to success with New Year's resolutions and goal attainment in every aspect of life.