New Year Evaluations

byNumerous

1K followers

8 years ago

This is Part 2 of a three part series on goal setting for the new year. You can find yesterday’s post here:

What are your New Year plans?

Yesterday, I talked about setting input goals vs output goals. Today, I want to focus on those output goals though, to sort of add on to Daniel’s comments about why he doesn’t set New Year Resolutions.

Daniel’s point was along the lines of new year resolutions are essentially a gimmick that rarely produce results for the people that set them. I’d be inclined to agree with that. My cousin this weekend was mentioning that he had taken a couple of weeks off the gym for the holidays and wasn’t looking forward to going back. He didn’t want to deal with the new year resolution people that would flood the gym for about two weeks and never be seen or heard from again. So this is a pretty well documented phenomena.

That being said, I do think the New Year resolution idea can play an important role in your goal setting practice in the following respect. Yesterday, I said you should not focus on your output goals, but rather use them to set the direction of your input goals. With that in mind, I think it’s also valuable to on at least a yearly basis look at your output goals and see if they’re still the direction you want to be headed in.

I would venture to guess, and I am definitely guilty of this myself, that there are a lot of people who set output goals based on something they desire without really thinking of the input work that is required to get those goals. Then one of three things happen. If you’re lucky you do all the right inputs, get the output you desire and all is right with the world. No further introspection required.

However, if you’re not that kind of lucky then, either you fail to do the inputs needed to get that goal you desire and beat yourself up for being a failure, or you do commit to the right inputs, but you’re so focused on chasing that output you ignore the fact that you’re making yourself miserable in the process.

In the first case, I wouldn’t consider you a failure. Maybe you could have tried harder, and maybe it’s worth rededicating yourself to doing those inputs. However, maybe you just learned that for you this goal isn’t worth the effort needed to achieve it. That’s a perfectly reasonable cost benefit analysis, and instead of beating yourself up, let go of the goal and go find something that you are interested in pursuing.

In the second case, I’ve seen people that spend their entire lives doing this. They’re so focused on chasing the things they think they want, they never stop and evaluate if there is something that would make them a lot happier with a lot less effort. Again, this is a perfectly reasonable cost benefit analysis. Don’t spend your entire life chasing happiness that may or may not be there when you reach the goal you’ve set, when if you take sometime right now you might realize there is a much easier way to find happiness right now.

So while Daniel is right that setting knee jerk resolutions on the first of the year just because everyone is doing it probably isn’t the best way to achieve success. Using this time of year as a marker to sit back and reflect on your efforts and decide if you still want the things you think you want would be an excellent way to use this yearly custom.

Assuming that you decide you do really want the goals you’ve set for yourself, my post tomorrow will be about a really powerful tool to get you to follow through with your inputs.