How Entrepreneurs Can Create Achievable New Years Resolutions

New Years Resolutions go beyond weight loss and beach body goals and entrepreneur’s are setting these resolutions as well.

I’ve worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and startups and noticed a common trend in setting New Year’s Resolutions.

Many entrepreneur’s make a number of “mistakes” when it comes to setting New Years Resolutions. The mistakes are so bad that they tend to never reach their goals.

The biggest mistake is setting a goal that is too grand.

I see it over and over again. The goal will be something like this: “I want to create a billion dollar company this year.”

While that is great and probably very inspirational, it’s a very grand goal. A goal that comes with a daunting amount of work required, therefore, people never actually do anything.

Instead, focus on a goal that is very simple and very specific.

“I want to generate 1 new consulting client, from social media advertising.”

That is a specific goal that you can achieve very quickly, and then your momentum will continue. Rather than setting a goal that is extremely grand, not specific, and you don’t even know where to start.

This goes hand in hand with the theory of productivity that involves taking little baby steps everyday to be productive.

I use this in my day to day. Starting with making the bed. It sounds simple and like it shouldn’t matter, but actually by having completed that 1 task early in the morning you are setting yourself up for positive momentum for the day.

Laser focus your New Year’s Resolution.

Pick 1 thing that is really specific that want to achieve, that includes how you are going to do it.

I might set a New Year’s Resolution of gaining 1 new consulting client, in website monetization, from personal referrals on my existing network.

This is great because I know exactly what I’m going to do, how I’m going to achieve the goal and where to start.

Of course you can deviate and pivot if something doesn’t go as planned, that’s part of the turf with being an entrepreneur. The point is not to be locked into the idea, just having enough clarity to know where to begin and exactly what the goal is.

Don’t generalize your New Year’s Resolution.

If you are not clear on exactly what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it, it makes it much harder to even begin.

The more daunting the task sounds, the less likely you are to even start.

I had a friend that wanted to lose 35 pounds and made that his resolution, but he was much less successful than the other friend who made a much simpler goal – to eat organic 80% of the time and shop at the farmer’s market.

The latter was way more successful, lost much more weight, and went above and beyond their initial resolution.

Instead of a New Year’s Resolution, come up with a quarterly goal.

Create a self-improvement morning ritual.

Create a morning routine every day to get you on point and focused. This routine will allow you to be more productive because every day you have a baseline of being productive and doing things.

Here are some examples of things you can do every morning for self-improvement and increased productivity:

– Meditate for 5-10 minutes.
– Workout lightly to get the blood moving.
– Take a cold shower, its switch to warm, just finish on cold.
– Stretch lightly.
– Make the bed – a great productivity hack.
– Writing, journal or read.
– Write down 1-3 micro-goals for the day, make sure you can accomplish them.

By creating a system that you follow every morning whether its one of these, all of these or something else entirely you will set yourself up for more productivity throughout the day.

Combine your short-term goals and long term goals.

Now that you have your short-term morning ritual with some goal setting, and your longer new year’s resolution type goals you are setting yourself up for achieving much more.

Make sure that your daily goals are aligned with your resolution for maximum impact.

I sometimes like to “dump” my goals for the next day the night before. This allows me to completely turn off my sometimes non-stop entrepreneurial mind so that I can take a break and enjoy time with my friends, partner, loved ones, etc.

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