Research indicates that about 92% of people fail on their New Year’s resolutions every year. In most cases, the reason is not willpower but the goal itself. People don’t take the time to set goals that are meaningful and achievable.
If you want to be one of the other 8% to achieve your goals, these free online guides will help you set New Year’s resolutions and plan how to stick to them. From simple 4-page worksheets to a massive 76-page free eBook, we’ve tried to explain what you can expect in each one, so you can choose the method that works best for you.
1. reflect and plan (Notion): review last year and set resolutions for the new year
Rowena Tsai, a content creator focused on beauty and mindfulness, has created a free Notion template to help you review the past year and learn how to set resolutions for the new year. While not an app or an article, it takes advantage of Notion’s capabilities to be perhaps the best made of the items on this list.
Tsai breaks the process down into three main worksheets: reflecting on and celebrating the past, finding my values ​​and setting intentions, and creating systems for the future. Click on any of these to open a tab that explains in more detail how to achieve the goal. Tsai has also created a companion video for each step, explaining what to add and exclude if the template itself isn’t enough.
The second step of finding your values ​​and setting intentions is the critical step here, where you identify what matters to you and prioritize it. Of course, you will need to do the other worksheets to clarify your ideas about this section and implement them. Once you have filled out all the worksheets, move on to the final worksheet for a one page New Year’s plan.
The most common New Year’s resolutions are to get fit, lose weight, and achieve better mental health. Ohio University partnered with health and wellness firm WellWorks to write a short guide that teaches people how to set up this wellness journey using the SMART goal planning technique.
You will learn the five steps of the SMART technique, that is, setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant/realistic, and time-bound goals. It’s a total of 28 pages, but several of them are like slides in a Powerpoint presentation, so it’s not much of a read.
While the SMART technique could also be applied to any non-health goal, the guide focuses only on this. It breaks down goals for fitness in motion, energy, rest and recovery, and stress management. Each type of goal offers multiple examples of what someone’s resolution is and how to break it down into a SMART goal. After learning from them, you can use the last page to set your own SMART New Year’s resolution.
Productivity expert Chris Bailey wrote an extensive guide to ensure anyone can understand the dangers of setting the wrong goals and what you need to do to ensure you reach your goals. It logs over 74 pages, but it’s completely free and includes no ads, subscriptions, or other subversive marketing tactics.
From page 9 to page 25, Bailey dives into the hidden costs of resolutions, how to know your values ​​using what he calls “critical points,” and choosing your resolutions. Bailey also recommends the SMART goal plan for setting your goals, but in addition, he also has tips on how to break them down into smaller units and make them challenging at the same time.
Bailey then uses methods from other productivity experts to ensure you act on your goals, like Charles Duhigg’s habit cycle method and GTD inventor David Allen’s tips for sticking to resolutions. The “Do It” section is especially interesting, as it shows you how to use various popular productivity systems for what you want to accomplish.
The New Year’s Resolutions Guide is available as a free download in PDF and EPUB formats. It’s one of the best tools for making New Year’s resolutions work.
Four. Will Baum Worksheet (PDF): Psychotherapist’s 4-Page Plan for New York Resolutions
Dr. Will Baum is a licensed psychotherapist who has worked with various types of mental health support programs. While on a 28-day crisis program, Baum created a worksheet for patients to set New Year’s resolutions, which has become one of the most popular shared resources on the Internet.
The worksheet is only four pages long. Baum’s goal was to break the goal-setting process into simple steps that lead to realistic, achievable, and meaningful resolutions. It is divided into three main sections:
- Inventory: Make a list of the goals you hope to achieve in the coming year, what behaviors have caused you problems in the past, and what attitudes have caused you problems in publishing.
- Resolutions: Based on your inventory, set five realistic resolutions that you know you can do. Baum also advises making his goals work in progress instead of finite end goals.
- Steps: List three key steps for each resolution that you know you can achieve.
Once you’re done completing the worksheet, Baum recommends finding someone you feel comfortable reading the sheet to you. Even if you don’t have anyone like that, read it out loud to yourself.
5. Matrix “What I want” (Web): Definitive Guide to Setting and Maintaining Better New York Resolutions
Author and entrepreneur Alida Miranda-Wolff’s masterful article on Medium deserves the hype of the title: It really is the ultimate guide to making and sticking to better New Year’s resolutions. The bulk of the article features tips on how to set your goals so that they are realistic and meaningful, as that is the best way to ensure that she actually sticks to them.
Miranda-Wolff has five key tips, and she expands on them in detail in the article. Here’s a summary of what you can expect:
- The matrix of “what I want”: Miranda-Wolff’s own system for clarifying your career-focused resolutions.
- Journal Reflections and Wish Lists: How to go through your diaries or wish lists to find what you really want.
- Reviews from last year: Productivity guru Tim Ferriss’s method for reflecting on the past year.
- 10 year plan: A series of questions to find out where you want your life to be in 10 years.
- Avoid the “should” trap: Two exercises to set goals that you really want to achieve, not what you think you should be doing.
Are New Year’s resolutions too intimidating for you? Try the 12-month Plan
As these guides indicate, you shouldn’t set a New Year’s resolution lightly. There is a process that will ensure that the goal is meaningful and realistic. But if you find it too daunting, try Harvard 12 Month Plan to choose and hold a resolution.
Each month is dedicated to one small step in the overall process of setting and committing to a goal. You can take all of January to set that goal, then all of February to commit to a process, and all of March to find your motivation. It’s slower, but it’s less pressure. Trying to improve is not a sprint, so go as slow as necessary.