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On Monday I said goodbye to the new year’s resolution. They are certainly a waste of time but what else can you do? As I said previously, though the new year is bad for resolutions, it’s great for that sense of having a fresh start and a clean slate. We humans seem to love it for some reason, so it’s silly not take advantage of it. In this post I want to start addressing that and look at an alternative way of how to make the most of the new year.

Firstly, there is your mindset. If you’re still carrying around a NYR mentality, then you need to ditch it permanently. It will only hold you back. It’s not enough to just say you’re going to do something, you have to consider how much you mean it, and how you’re actually going to achieve it. Once you start thing in those terms, you’re halfway there. However, there are also two other matters to think about:

• Be honest
  Don’t let peer pressure cloud your decisions. Don’t let the latest scare stories in newspapera drive you into things that deep down you don’t want to do. There is a big difference between feeling like doing something, and having the motivation and desire to follow that up for months and even years. There are many things I’d like to do, but enough to show dedication to it far into the future. No. Do you really want to quit smoking and no longer have the calming buzz of a cigarette between your fingers? Do you really want to be debt-free by the end of the year and forever miss out on the regular shopping indulgences? Be honest with yourself.
• Be realistic
  Combined with being honest is being realistic about what you want to achieve. Traditional self-help gibberish tells you to reach for the stars! Anything is possible! Hmm, no. Being realistic isn’t about dumbing down your goals, it’s about taking out the puppy dogs and fairies and turning a fantasy into something that you may actually be able to make happen. Unlike a football team which has a shouting manager and big pay packet to motivate them into getting back up after a bad run of results, you’ll only have yourself. Dream big, sure, but don’t get too carried away.

I must stress that though many people have achieved amazing things in their lives, they didn’t do it by having hopefully optimistic designs for their life. They were realistic and turned that realism into action.

Now that you have the right mindset for creating goals that you can actually achieve, you need to actually decide what it is you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. It’s time to be strategic and smart and do some serious planning. Below are several very varied techniques to help you really analyze your life and inspire some some lean and mean goals to pursue through 2010.

• Horizons of focus
  You don’t have to be a GTD fan to take advantage of this common-sense breakdown of your life. I personally, never really got into it, but it clearly has value to many people. Essentially, there are six levels of focus, ranging from the big vision of your life at the top, to your daily activity at the bottom. How does everything align up? You can check out a previous post I wrote for full details on how to implement it.
• My own approach
  If that’s a little too much for you, last year I experimented with my own approach which is actually something I still use. Essentially, you start in the middle, considering what current goals you have or want to do, then going a level to consider what actions you need to take to achieve them, and up a level to see how those goals fit into your big vision.
• SWOT analysis
  This may bring back a few memories for those who did business studies at school. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Yes, it is possible to apply it to your life, your finances, work, play, social life, hobbies and interests etc. Check out this post for a really good understanding of how it works.
• SMART goals
  Another oldie but goodie. Again, it’s not something I’ve ever actively used but you can’t deny the value in it. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (that word again!) and timeframed. If your goals don’t follow all of those criteria, you can forget about it. More details on this technique can be found here.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are many other techniques out there, but hopefully this will give you a taster. It might seem overkill, and a little unnecessary to put your personal life under such scrutiny, but perhaps the fact we give our work life too much attention and our personal life so little is why many people are unhappy. Do you have any favorite practices for coming up with and setting goals? Why not share them in the comments or on Twitter? Hopefully this time next year, the idea of having new year’s resolutions will be a thing of the past!

Related reading

• Sorry, But New Year’s Resolutions Are A Waste Of Time
• New Years Fever! Why Now Is Not The Time For Introspection
• Why You Shouldn’t Do New Year’s Resolutions
• Interesting Links: Priscilla’s Personal Development List
• Your Guide To The GTD Vertical Map (Horizons Of Focus)