fbpx

How to actually advance your New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions are a bit controversial.  While I’m not aware of any hard research on the matter, antidotally, it does seem like the resolutions fade pretty quickly.

Instead of resolutions, try constructing your goals with clear lead and lag indicators.  Let me explain….

A lead indicator is an activity that if you focus on it, will lead to your result, the lag indicator.  Take weight loss for example.  The lag indicator is your weight goal, the lead indicator is calories burned vs calories consumed.  Lead indicators generally are much harder to identify and track.  Using this example, it’s easy to set a weight goal, much harder to know what the corresponding calories consumed/burned needs to be and how to accurately track that.

In everything you’re trying to advance in your life and business, there is a lead and lag indicator.  Figuring out what they are, and coming up with a way to measure them is the real work required to actually advance your goals.

If you want more info on this, I suggest you check out the 4 Disciplines of Execution by Franklin Covey which is where I got the idea, to begin with.