Ditch the New Year's Resolution

I hate News Year’s resolutions. Hate them.  Everyone always has a renewed sense of self, because of the calendar.  It seems to me that we shouldn’t need the calendar’s permission to do the things that we know,

we should be doing. 

However, I do like the idea of goals.  And yes, I understand they can be virtually the same as New Year’s resolutions.  But we can set goals any time. 

Why in the world do we need goals?  Can’t we have just as much success without them and without the stress they bring us?  Chances are, if you search long enough, you will find some contrarian with an article or newsletter (we’re a dime a dozen, you know) that will justify your opinion. 

But it’s pretty simple.  The successful and happy people I know have goals.  The less-than-successful, i.e., Debbie Downer’s, don’t.  I want to be like the first group.

Case in point:

We’ve all heard of the Yale study that surveyed the 1953 graduating class about goals.  They discovered that 3% of the graduates had written goals and 97% did not.  At the twenty year reunion, they surveyed them again and discovered the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined!  Amazing! This has even been quoted by Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, and every other motivational speaker since.  The problem is the study never really happened.  I’m not one to be dissuaded by silly things like facts, so I have found another college study to my example.

Domincan University (yes, it’s a real place) recruited 267 participants from a wide variety of businesses, organizations, and networking groups throughout the United States and overseas for a study on how goal achievement in the workplace is influenced by writing goals, committing to goal-directed actions, and accountability for those actions. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 72 and represented a wide spectrum of backgrounds.

Participants in the study were randomly assigned to one of five groups.

• Group 1 was asked to simply think about their goals.  
• Group 2 was asked to write their goals.
• Group 3 was asked to write action commitments for each goal. 
• Group 4 had to both write goals and action commitments and also share these commitments with a friend. 
• Group 5 went the furthest by doing all of the above plus sending a weekly progress report to a friend.

So how did each group do?

• Group 1 – 43% accomplished their goals.
• Group 2 – 51% accomplished their goals.
• Group 3 – 61% accomplished their goals.
• Group 4 – 64% accomplished their goals.
• Group 5 – 76% accomplished their goals.

Take that Yale! So, if you want to get something done this year, ditch the resolution and set a specific goal and share it with a friend. 

"If you're bored with life -- you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things -- you don't have enough goals." - Lou Holtz