Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Set a target to keep your resolutions attainable

New Year’s resolutions can be really exciting, but may seem so open-ended that they become daunting. This week’s tip, shared by rdseabrook, takes the simple act of of completing your resolution tasks and turns it into a way to know where you are now so you can keep striving to do better.

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions to counter a bad habit. But many resolutions are expressed too imprecisely to be effective: for example, “drink less alcohol.” To be motivating, goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, agreed-upon, realistic, and time-based.

For the last few years I have set a task called “no alcohol” that repeats after one day, forever. I then count up the number of “no alcohol” days each year using a smart search such as this:

name:"no alcohol" AND completedBefore:01/01/18 AND completedAfter:01/01/17

The search returns the number completed within the timeframe in the form “XX completed.”

If you do this you may be shocked to find how few times you completed the task. This year, for the first time, I have set a numerical target for the year. I find it super-motivating, and maybe you will too.

Thanks for sharing this tip, rdseabrook! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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