Translate Your New Year’s Resolutions to 24 Hours

If you see my New Year’s resolutions, the only way to sum it up is:

She wants it all. Well, I am not ashamed of that.

My struggle is a structural problem: Focus is a rare good in a world of endless information.

Simplification is a hard task in an overly complex world.

However, we have to acknowledge there are limits in a world that seems limitless.

The most important limit is time.

*looks at her resolutions*

It was at that point that the author noticed, she messed up.

From fluffy to realistic plans

If I reality-check my ambitions, these are rather wishes than plans.

Super driven, super unrealistic to achieve in one year: Getting a much higher personal class in tennis, doing a superb job that involves some traveling, learning to speak Spanish and to snowboard, and living abroad.

ha, ha!

I set myself up to miss my goals.

To not end up depressed by missing my 2024 goals, I introduced time management to transform my wishes into plans:

What if I only had 24 hours to get somewhere near your goals?

I answered that question thoroughly. The outcome also showed that I need

a) to be more humble and

b) to set stronger priorities

My goals were depressingly reduced, yet my scribbles mirrored to a much better extent what I could achieve in one year with a clear strategy.

I reduced my primary goals to my job and a better (not way better) tennis class. This is what I can work on daily. Snowboarding became an extra, as this is (hopefully) feasible on a holiday.

Learn from your mistakes

My biggest mistake is that I go crazy with endless ambitions — and then fail because I lose focus wanting it all.

It is so charming to radically overestimate what I can do and lose sight of reality.

However, reality never asks to be invited. It will hit hard anyway.

For me, recent examples of overestimation are:

I proclaimed a medium challenge to write an article every day from the middle of December until NYE and only managed to write a few.
I am sitting on my couch right now writing this article while actually having to prepare for a NYE 6k race. I will start in not even two hours. (wish me luck!)

Mostly, I end up stressed by not getting where I wanted.

Translating plans into strategy: Setting sail for 2024

Narrowing my goals and then making solid, time-related plans on a weekly or daily basis to achieve these will bring me much further than having ambitions to the sky.

Set up systems for you to achieve a maximum of three big yearly goals.

Do it like Jay Shetty: In one of his podcasts, he explains how he wanted to reduce screen time. The system he set up was that while he was working or in need of focus, he kept his phone in a different room and on flight mode. Meanwhile, he left open books everywhere in the house so if he needed some entertainment, he got used to just reading some pages. Well done!

To dive deeper into the psychology of achieving goals, I highly recommend reading “Willpower Is Not The Solution” by Cassie Kozyrkov
.

I’ll leave you with that as now — I have to rush to my NYE race!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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