Beyond Resolutions: The Complete Guide to Achieving Your 2023 New Year Goals
By Mike Pietrzak
Author’s note: This is an updated version of 2021s guide, which generated a flood of positive comments. It’s packed with new exercises and info that will help you create a more powerful “why” and go beyond goal setting into reliable systems. Enjoy!
[Download this Guide as a PDF here]
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“You need to start smoking again.”
That was the most sincere, heartfelt advice I could give my co-worker.
Lorenzo had quit smoking 30 days before, and the whole office had been hearing daily how miserable he was.
My remark wasn’t unsympathetic—I had won the war against smoking the year before, after 15 years and 10 lost battles. But I could see that Lorenzo was suffering more as a non-smoker.
He had decided on January 1st that he would will himself off tobacco, but I could see that his heart wasn’t in it.
His fatal flaw?
New Year’s resolutions are for amateurs.
If you want meaningful, lasting change in your life, you need a system—a guide.
What’s in This Guide?
This is a comprehensive guide to installing systems that will help you get the maximum achievement and joy out of your year—not just in 2023, but for the rest of your life.
It’s a roadmap for:
Creating a compelling vision for your life that excites you
Determining what your inner self wants to accomplish this year
How to set motivating and achievable goals
Executing on action items by using reliable systems that will help you make consistent, noticeable progress
Methods for staying on track, not just until most resolutions fail by January 17th, but right until the end of the year
I’ve updated it for 2023 to include the powerful tools and information that I learned and applied over the last 365 days.
One warning: This guide is not for the dabbler. Adopting the systems below requires a shift in lifestyle and mindset.
But I can promise, if you put this guide into practice you’ll see results at a level you’ve never seen before.
[Download this Guide as a PDF here]
Table of Contents
I wouldn’t want you to get lost, so use these links to get around:
How Do I Know This Works?
I know that this system works because I started using it in 2012. In that time I launched six businesses on two continents, a writing career and a coaching practice, while carrying a full-time job, during much of that period.
I’ve built a fun, loving relationship with a woman who is now my wife, welcomed our first baby girl who is almost a year old, and my fitness level is exceptional, even though I turned 40 this year.
Don’t misunderstand me: I am deeply flawed and my life is far from perfect. I face both the garden variety existential problems and daily failures.
But when it comes to Getting Stuff Done, I’ve met few equals. In order to squeeze more productivity and growth out of myself, I have gone to lengths that can only be described, in clinical terms, as “insane.”
Fear not, this guide is not a boot camp. As long as you apply it consistently throughout the year, you will see results, no matter how “insane” you want to get with it.
You’re in good hands. Let’s go.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
“When you feel like you’re not productive, it’s not necessarily because you’re lazy or because you have bad habits, it’s because you’re not working on the right projects and you haven’t found the ones that are intrinsically motivating and meaningful to you.” —Adam Grant
“I’m going to lose some weight this year!”
“I’m going to live life to the fullest in 2023!”
Ugh. You might as well say, “I have no idea what I want out of life, but let’s set a vague goal while I’m hungover and back it up with absolutely zero planning!”
The statistics on resolutions speak volumes. Depending on the study, only between 12% and 39% of resolution-makers succeed. And the success rates plummet as we age.
How can this be? Most of us only make one life-altering resolution. You had one job! And all year to accomplish it. But most people quit by January 17th.
Resolutions fail for four main reasons:
Fail #1: They’re too big
Why is it that the Monday crossword puzzle taped to the coffee shop counter is enjoyable but the New York Times Saturday version makes you cry like a baby?
It’s because humans have a challenge “sweet spot.” Too easy, and we lose interest. Too tough, and we throw our hands in the air.
When we say that in 2023 we’ll go to the gym five days a week, but we went 10 times in all of 2022, the challenge is too big not to fail.
Good goals live in the Goldilocks zone: not too easy, not too tough, just right.
Fail #2: They’re too vague
One of the top resolutions in 2022 was “save money.” That’s a laudable goal that most people can support. But it’s not specific. How much money do you want to save?
It’s not measurable. How will you know when you achieve it? We need the promise of a pot full of gold to bother chasing the rainbow.
Nor is it scheduled. How much time do I have? Vague goals don’t inspire. If I put a dollar in the bank, technically I’ve succeeded.
Good goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Hmm, we need a shorthand for all that. How about, SMART?
Fail #3: They’re other people’s resolutions
If you want: six-pack abs, a smaller/bigger behind, a fairy-tale wedding, a bigger truck, cleaner gutters, or whiter teeth… then you may just be a victim of effective advertising.
Or perhaps you want to make more money than your brother, win the baseball tournament or graduate at the top of your class. Those may seem like healthy pursuits, but any time your goal is measured against someone else, you’re motivated not by your own true wants, but by what society wants you to want.
Don’t make the mistake of getting to the end of your life only to realize you were running someone else’s race. The best goals come directly from the highest authority: your inner core.
Fail #4: We expect change NOW
“I tried meditation once, it didn’t work for me.”
I hear that often, always from people who are running in five directions at once, doing everything, but nothing well, burning out at least once a season. I tell them to replace the word “meditation” with “showering” to help them see their folly.
For most of human history we couldn’t just flick a switch and get light, or tap an app for dinner. I’m thankful for these conveniences but see how it’s stolen our patience.
A baby doesn’t try to walk a few times then say, “I guess I’m not cut out for this.” Great change doesn’t happen after a handful of tries, but that’s how we tackle our resolutions.
Lasting change happens when we make an irreversible decision to lose the weight or quit smoking—no matter how much time or effort is required. Burn the boats!
How Habits Work
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, describes how the habit loop works:
The Cue: tells your brain to start a routine
The Routine: a behavior or thought pattern you carry out
The Reward: some shiny nugget that makes us feel good, and tells our brain to repeat this pattern
Most New Year’s resolutions fail to become habits because:
The cue (January 1st) only comes around once a year.
We don’t create a routine; we sign up for the gym but have no plan or system to cue us to go sweat.
We don’t experience rewards along the way. The reward is one huge and/or vague goalpost that seems impossibly distant.
This guide works because it gives you daily cues to take action (which you’ve carefully chosen), provides a pre-baked routine (do this at this time of day, on this day of the week), and delivers constant rewards by listing your accomplishments yearly, quarterly and daily. But there’s more.
Atomic Habits author James Clear builds on Duhigg’s three-step model, arguing that “It lacks a good explanation of how our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs impact our behavior,” he says. I agree.
Good or bad, habits work. But without a compelling reason—an inner why—to stick to these behaviors, we won’t stick with them.
Let’s start with why, then.
[Download this Guide as a PDF here]
Part I: Your Life Vision
“I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier.” —Arnold Schwarzenegger
I’m embarrassed by all the years I walked through life without any picture at all for my future.
Like most people, I moved from day to day and year to year without any purpose. I had hopes for a promotion, wealth and love, but hope is not a strategy. I never took time to think about what my ideal life looked like.
Eventually I discovered goal setting and worked to become a writer, build a business and travel. But with vague goals, I got vague results. Had my ideal life hit me in the face, I doubt I’d have recognized it.
You can’t hit a target you can’t see. The antidote to vagueness is to set a clear vision for your life.
For years my mentors preached vision, but frankly, it sounded stupid; an exercise that a corporation would do once for their shareholders, then forget. And vision boards? They seemed more appropriate for teenaged art students.
But the more I studied personal development, the more the experts agreed: Vision is the most important determinant of success.
What the Heck Is Vision?
Most literally, a vision is a mental picture of what you want. Why bother? Because when you can see your outcome clearly, your brain becomes far more effective at manifesting it. It’s a strange phenomenon, but it works.
Your end goal is to see this vision in your mind’s eye, but you create it first on paper. How clear is your vision?
If your goal is to build a business:
What is your product? What are your margins?
What does your ideal customer look like? Male/female? Young/old? Do they drive a Prius or a Lexus?
Do you see a clear picture of where you’re working? In an office or at home?
If your goal is to find your soulmate:
What are his or her qualities and values? Respect? Trust? Honesty?
What are your deal breakers? Lying? Drugs? Bad breath?
Where do you live with this person? Will you have children?
If your goal is chiseled abdominal muscles:
Does that mean the body of a runner? Weightlifter? Yoga mom?
How big are your pecs? Biceps? Legs? How fast can you run a mile?
Where do you train? Do you run? Lift? Rock climb? Play tennis?
Goals are critical to your success, but the sharper you can make that picture, the more likely you’ll get exactly what you see.
Step 1: Create a Vision for Your Life
No biggie, just set the direction for your life here, mmm-kay? Yes, right now. Don’t let this overwhelm you—a life vision is a living, growing entity, a perennial rough draft that will never feel “perfect” for long because we evolve.
Take just 10 minutes now to write a statement of what you think you might want your life to be about (see how vague we’re allowed to be, for now?).
Answer these questions in point form to help get you started:
What do I love? What do I hate?
What do I want to do with my life?
What am I good at? What, when I do it, makes time melt away?
How can I serve the world?
Turn your answers into a short, one-paragraph statement of your life’s vision. Here’s mine:
“I use my entrepreneurial and writing talents to design and build enterprises that create a better world, helping others realize their highest potential, generating fantastic wealth and abundance in the process.”
Great, now you have a North Star for your whole life (which can change!). Later, we’ll create your 1-year and 3-month visions.
[Download this Guide as a PDF here]
Part II: Yearly Planning
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did.” —H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Experiencing the best year of your life won’t happen accidentally.
Successful companies take the time to create business plans, and top performers take the time to set a course for their lives.
This section will show you how to decide on what you truly want to accomplish this year, how to set goals and action items to support those goals, how to install systems, and measure your progress in order to stay motivated and on track the whole time.
Step 0: Create Space
I block January 1st, 2nd and 3rd in my calendar for this Yearly Planning exercise.
Three days may seem like a lavish expenditure of time, but protecting 0.8% of my year makes the other 99.2% of my days exponentially more productive and fulfilling than it would be if I’d started my year watching movies on the couch.
If you just can’t find three days, that’s fine, but you’ll need one full, uninterrupted day, minimum.
On the morning of January 1st: Take an ibuprofen, find a quiet space and close the door. Disconnect from the internet, and leave your phone in another room.
Step 1: Review the Previous Year
On a sheet of paper or blank Word document (I use Evernote), list these headings, and write your answers:
1. What were my goals? Did I achieve them or make progress?
Maybe you didn’t set explicit goals for yourself last year. Maybe you only made a casual resolution. That’s OK—do this exercise and next year you’ll have new benchmarks to build on. Even if you didn’t write down any goals, you were surely working on some things. What were they?
My goals included: creating financial and time freedom, building a thriving business, signing two coaching clients per month, increasing my maximum lifts at the gym, and publishing a certain number of articles.
On January 1st I list every goal and sub-goal from last year and make a yes/no determination. Did I hit my targets? If not, why? Did I make progress? I make no value judgments yet, only observations. The answers help with the next question.
2. What worked well?
Here we pat ourselves on the back, shelling out well-earned credit for our positive outcomes. This is not a list of detailed accomplishments (that comes later); we’re looking for themes and trends.
For example, at the start of 2020 I gave myself credit for writing at least one hour each morning because it allowed me to publish 19 articles in 2019; and for cutting alcohol to near zero for six months because I saved more than a few pennies and had much more time and energy on the weekends.
When we identify what worked well, we can double down on these actions.
3. What could improve?
This exercise is less fun because it shines a light on all the broken, rust-covered parts of our year that are strewn across the front yard of our life.
Don’t fear this! Facing reality, even the uncomfortable parts, is the first step in creating a better one. I have two caveats:
Many things that are missing or messed up in our lives are outside our control. Sometimes you make all the right moves and fate still lands you in Monopoly jail. Make peace with that.
Even when the failure is clearly yours, beating yourself up will not help. Guilt should be used like a spare tire—only when you’re forced to, and for as little time as possible.
Despite amazing progress overall, last year I listed many areas to improve: I did not manage money as well as I could have, took on far too many projects in January and had to admit that my business model was not producing results.
But hey! Once I admitted these things, I was able to prioritize fixes for the next year.
4. How do I feel about last year?
The danger in listing goals and making yes/no appraisals about them is that it’s almost a purely “head” centered exercise.
Sure, you’ll get a factual report of how effective and productive you were, but this can’t tell you whether all of this frenetic activity is having the desired effect. In other words, are you happy?
For an answer, you need to go to the heart, which is why I recently added this question to my Yearly Planning review.
This activity combats Resolution Fail #3: the risk of running someone else’s race.
The best way to answer this question is by writing in stream of consciousness—no bullets, no overthinking, no censoring—have the courage to be brutally honest with yourself in answering the question: Am I fulfilled?
After all, that’s the whole reason why we set goals and chase accomplishment: to feel good! If the answer is anything but “heck yes,” take it as a blessing; a signal that you need to work on different priorities.
Your heart will respond by the end of this exercise. Don’t be afraid to write pages and pages here.
5. What are all the things I accomplished?
This part’s my favorite! It’s an excuse to spend a few moments in pure celebration, something none of us do often enough. Here you can list all of the notable, amazing things you did and that happened to you between January 1st and December 31st.
Include whatever is meaningful to you, no matter how big or small. My list for 2019 included moving to Mexico, but also finding a great new coffee shop. I ended up with over 90 things to be thankful for. When you see it all in one place, you’ll feel proud and grateful.
Where can you find items for your list? Go back through your calendar week by week, look at your journal, or ask your partner or family members to remind you about the good times.
This is not just some indulgence: Listing the positive experiences helps us relive them, which releases happy hormones in our bodies, like dopamine and serotonin. Associating our accomplishments with feeling good helps drive us to more accomplishment. It creates a healthy addiction in us, something resolutions don’t do.
6. The financial snapshot.
No annual reflection would be complete without a clear understanding of the state of your financial affairs.
Start by listing the value of your current assets: cash, stocks, bonds, real estate/equity, pension, insurance policy, the wad of $100s under your mattress. Then, tally your liabilities: credit card debt, mortgage, car lease, student loans, what you owe to the Latvian mafia.
Subtract liabilities from assets to calculate your net worth. The first time you do this might be a shock—good or bad. At least now you know. Plus, next January you’ll be able to see whether this figure is moving in the right direction or not, and calculate how much money you’ve squirreled away.
This part of your Yearly Plan is also a good opportunity to see where you can cut the fat on your budget. I use Mint.com, which gathers account data into a single dashboard, and helps me understand where every dollar is going.
For example, recently I noticed that my insurance premiums have been getting out of hand. I switched providers and will save $1,200 this year.
I can also see where I’m over- or under-spending (OK, the latter never happens), and adjust my habits.