SMART goal setting: Making ‘New Week resolutions’

As we’ve talked about a lot, January is the ideal time to make resolutions, set goals and create marketing strategies for the year ahead. I usually do these things, but this year I didn’t get around to it.

Using the justification that long-term change starts with small steps, this year I’m wimping out of ambitious New Year’s resolutions altogether, and settling for more manageable New Week resolutions.

Using that well-worn acronym of S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting, I’ve made a list of five Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely goals for the week ahead to kick-start improvements in my business and personal life this year.

Business:

• I will write my daily to-do list and plan my work day the night before
• I will turn off phones and email for at least three hours per day to ‘eat that frog’
• I will tidy my office to within an inch of its life (including the horrifying top drawer)

Personal:

• I will do 3 x 1 hour exercise sessions this week
• I will skip the evening beer for seven days. Goodbye holiday happy hour!
• I will get my daughters’ kites to fly higher than 3 metres off the ground

Want more articles like this? Check out the setting business goals section.

I will report on how things went in the comments below next Tuesday.

I invite you to join my New Week resolution challenge by adding a comment sharing one or more S.M.A.R.T. goals that you plan to achieve this coming week.

You can then come back next week to gloat about it. There’s nothing quite like the satisfying feeling of crossing tasks off the to-do list.

Who knows? We might even kick start some new habits.

Happy New Week everybody!