Keeping New Years Resolutions: Make Them Measurable

On the 1st of the month or the year you made a resolution: "I'm going to get in shape for summer." On the 4th, you had been exercising every day for three days and felt great. By the 15th, you had exercised about half the days and were losing faith in yourself. By the 30th you gave up and are a couch potato again. It doesn't have to end that way if you borrow an idea from business improvement methods and measure your actions and outcomes, instead of focusing on a vaguely worded goal.

A resolution with an open-ended goal like "I'm going to get in shape, or save money, or eat better," is destined to fail because you have no way to tell when you are getting closer to the goal. Instead of resolving to reach a goal, resolve to take measurable actions towards that goal. Don't set yourself up for failure by resolving to be perfect. Perfection is overrated: a Major League baseball player who gets a base hit only 1/3 of the time is in the running for the record books.

What is a measurable resolution? If you can put gold stars on a calendar for each time you did or didn't do it, it's measurable. If you can write it in a diary or journal, it's measurable. I don't consider weight loss to be a measurable resolution because it is a goal, not an activity. Revising your food habits to make weight loss happen could be a measurable resolution if you list the changes and measure how often you perform them.

Why does a measurable resolution work better? If it is not measurable, you can lie to yourself about how well you are doing or yell at yourself for not reaching your goal even though you are making progress. If it is measurable, you have concrete evidence of what is working and what isn't. You can go back through your calendar or journal and see how well you are doing.

Example resolution: Instead of "I'm going to get in shape for summer", make several independent resolutions that will get you closer to being "in shape". Setting up multiple resolutions improves your chances of being successful at some of them. Perhaps you would have two exercise resolutions and two food-related resolutions: walk 1/2 hour a day at least 4 days a week, perform at least one cycle of weight work at the gym at least 2 days a week, eat breakfast at home at least 4 days a week, and eat more than 10 servings of vegetables a week.

Track your performance so you can review how you are doing whenever you want to. Don't rely on your memory. Yes, gold stars on a calendar work for grownups as well as pre-schoolers. If it's a more complex resolution, for modifying your food habits, use a journal to write down the details. Each day you carry out any of the resolutions, give yourself a gold star for that resolution.

Decide how to reward yourself for keeping the resolution at the time you make the resolution. Write the reward and the requirements down. Make the reward based on an attainable number of successes, and make the rewards small and frequent at first.

If one of the resolutions isn't working don't criticize yourself and give up: troubleshoot it. If home-made breakfast isn't working, what can you do to make it happen? Can you cook some food ahead of time, find some microwave breakfast recipes, or change your idea of "breakfast" to include fruit and cheese? If the 1/2 hour walks aren't happening, would changing the time for the walk make it workable? Would you do better with a walking partner? Or was that an unworkable resolution because of weather or other factors?

If a resolution is truly unfeasible, replace it with an activity that will also help you achieve your goal and don't yell at yourself for it. Just keep counting the successes, not the failures.