New Year's Resolution: How to Fulfill It?

Blog Readers Already Know How to Fulfill New Year's Resolution

For the “So List” blog, this marks the first New Year. Over the past nine months, we’ve explored what a list, checklist, and to-do list are. We’ve learned how to create checklists and set achievable goals. We’ve practiced revisiting these tools for thinking and improving them. All of this knowledge is more than enough to fulfill your promises to build the new habit that’s great and abandon the old one that’s shabby.

However, sometimes, even when we know enough, the knowledge doesn’t form a complete picture. We live without realizing we can pull everything together to make the year ahead better than the last.

So what do lists have to do with this? At first glance, this blog might seem to be about this familiar and common topic. But really, it’s about creating a better life — and the road trip to that life is paved with items.

Enough introductions, let’s use our knowledge to create a practical set of New Year’s resolutions.

Why Don’t We Usually Fulfill Our New Year's Resolution?

What are New Year’s resolutions? It’s a tradition designed to help people set goals and improve their lives. This might mean setting financial goals like to save money or to earn your first million, adopting a healthier lifestyle, working on your mental health, or finally committing to spending quality time with family members.

We all want to do better, not worse. What better time for hopeful aspirations than Christmas Eve or New Year's Day? Everyone is dressed up, celebrating, dreaming, and believing in miracles. The atmosphere is perfect for setting goals as the fresh start is approaching. How can you resist making a promise or two after reflecting on the not so productive past year?

But often, even in the upcoming year, things don’t pan out. First, one promise gets forgotten, then another. New Year’s resolutions melt away like snowflakes. Especially when you come back to normal life and have to manage stress that accompanies you usually.

Let’s go through the imaginary example.

Let’s Climb Everest This Year

Picture yourself at the New Year’s table, feeling inspired. Your intentions are firm, and you’re ready for serious commitments — no less than a feat of strength. Your goal is Everest, a symbol of ultimate achievement of personal growth, and the end goal of all super-productive achievers.

A few days later, you’re back at work from 9 to 6. You rest in the evenings and catch up on chores on weekends. Your screen time is as usual, the intensively processed food is again on your table. It turns out Everest requires more than determination: it demands time, money, and organization. Without those resources, your plan fails.

Everest is a great example of an unrealistic resolution for most people. Let’s leave it for now and choose something more practical yet still rewarding. Then, let’s refine our desires with a proven action plan.

Promising Ourselves to Look Better in the New Year

Before tackling our goals, let’s remember that setting objectives without providing methods to achieve them is a hallmark of bad management. Scientific management has this to say [1]:

Eliminate the use of slogans, posters, and exhortations for the work-force, demanding Zero Defects and new levels of productivity, without providing methods. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships; the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system (see Chapter 4), and thus lie beyond the power of the work-force.

In our case, the “system” means the lifestyle. Let’s get back to our goal.

Imagine planning to look better in the year ahead. Well, it’s not as fascinating as a new hobby, or as captivating as the professional growth, but still quite a decent desire. This is the summit of our imagined Everest, the object of our desires. What’s the risk? The risk is that soon, one might forget this intention — or vaguely remember it but decide to act “later”, aka never.

Starting to Remember Your New Year's Resolution

To achieve your year’s goals, you must not forget them. Don’t passively recall your resolutions, but actively revisit them. For example, every Sunday at 10 a.m. after breakfast, ask yourself:

• “What did I do last week to fulfill my New Year’s resolution?”

The first answer will likely be “nothing”. Life is busy — kids, work, routines. That’s understandable.

But if you’re honest with yourself and still care about your goal, by the fifth or something time, you’ll get tired of doing nothing. You’ll decide it’s time to act.

By the way, sharing your resolution with close friends can also provide additional support and accountability.

Building a Roadmap to Your New Year’s Resolution

In the post “How to Create a Checklist That Works?” a wise person noted that vague goals — like “looking better in the new year” — should be refined into something clear by asking “what is?”

So, what is “looking better”? I won’t pretend to know every case, but will better stick to mine:

• No belly sticking out.
• Skin not drying or cracking from the cold.

What have we got? In terms of the article on setting achievable goals, we’ve identified two key milestones. What’s the characteristic of them? They are easy to understand, but not practical for execution. For instance, I can gather in my belly right now so it doesn’t stick out, but that’s not the result I want. I simply can’t obtain the desired result in one step. I need to continue building the “route” until I break it down into tasks.

And what is a meaning of a task here? On the opposite of milestone, one can complete it in a straightforward way. Many of us have heard the saying [2] “a journey of a thousand li begins with a single step”. But it doesn’t just begin with a step, it continues with steps and is made up of them. At some point, it becomes clear that we can stop walking because we’ve arrived — the goal is met. This is how the process of reaching goals works.

Can we immediately propose any steps for our milestones? Both yes, and no. Let’s apply the “how to achieve this?” to our milestones. The structure becomes as follows:

• Look better in the new year:
  • No belly sticking out:
    • Research ways to lose belly fat.
  • Skin not drying out:
    • Search for a dermatologist.
    • Visit the dermatologist.
    • Follow the dermatologist’s recommendations.

As for skincare, the actions seem doable. Even if, during the process, it turns out otherwise, it will be enough to adjust the plans. But what about the belly?

I suspect that I won’t be able to figure out the way to lose belly fat in one sitting. Of course, I could just pay for a gym membership and hope for the best, but it’s better to approach it more thoughtfully. For example, I can read articles on reputable websites, read books, and watch videos.

While you can address skincare steps without changing habits, losing weight requires a different process. Currently, I only know that at some point, I’ll watch and read enough. The thing is, I’m not sure when exactly. It’s not a good idea to consume everything in one go. There might not be enough time, and creating problems by sacrificing sleep, study, or work is not something I want to include in my New Year’s resolution.

You probably have a habit of scrolling through your phone for an hour or two in the evening. This is a great candidate for biting off half an hour for something more productive. That’s when we’ll start the task: “Study for half an hour the ways to lose belly fat.”

Why We Didn’t Plan the Whole Journey Immediately

You may have noticed that we didn’t map out the entire process but listed just the first steps. This was deliberate. Planning distant actions that depend on earlier ones is pointless. At the start of your journey, you lack the information needed to plan far ahead, and these imaginary plans won’t give anything to your personal development.

For example, you might plan to buy a gym membership, only to later decide to do at-home workouts instead. Or you can find new friends to do the workouts outdoors. Or even, you might consider incorporating new foods and removing the old ones into your diet.

How to Fulfill New Year’s Resolution? A Summary

1. Make your New Year’s promises and write them down.
2. Develop the habit of reviewing your resolutions weekly by asking, “What did I do last week to fulfill my resolutions?”
3. When tired of answering “nothing,” start building a path:
   1. Break vague resolutions into clear key milestones by asking “what is?” question.
   2. Break key goals into smaller tasks, with “how to achieve this?”
4. When you’ve thought through the first actionable steps, plan their execution. Add the straightforward ones to the “gaps” in your usual schedule. For longer tasks, adjust your habits.
5. When steps are complete, return to Step 3.
6. If you achieve your resolution, congratulations! You’ve succeeded. Happy New Year! As a bonus, after documenting your journey at the end of the year, you’ll have a wonderful gratitude journal. The one that is grateful to yourself.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to So List for more about personal organization with lists and checklists. Familiar with lists already? Doubtful — they hold far too many secrets.

References

[1] Henry R. Neave, The Deming Dimension, ISBN 978-0-945320-36-4
[2] “Laozi” from Wikiquote.