How to make achievable and meaningful New Year's resolutions? Five Questions, Wheel of Life, and Ideal Week methods.
If you're wondering how to make effective New Year resolutions, Ali Abdaal and Waki have three methods to help you set achievable and meaningful goals.
The first one is the Five Questions Method. Many people struggle to achieve their New Year's resolutions because they set unrealistic goals. To set practical goals for the upcoming year, reviewing our previous year and using that as a baseline to calibrate our new year resolutions is essential. A simple way to review our last year is to ask ourselves these five questions in order:
- What went well last year?
- What didn't go so well last year?
- What did I learn from last year?
- What does it look like to live like a winner in the new year?
- What are my New Year's resolutions?
The second method is the Wheel of Life. It consists of dividing our life into three categories and nine segments, which are work (money, mission, growth), health (physical, mental, spiritual), and relationships (romance, family, friends). We then rate our current satisfaction level for each segment on a scale of 0 to 10. After that, we identify the areas of our lives that we are not satisfied with and think about how we can align our actions with our goals to improve our satisfaction in those areas. For each segment, we should write down one specific goal and regularly reflect on why it is important to us.
The third one is the Ideal Week Calendar Method. First, we create a new blank calendar in Google Calendar or any other calendar system we use. Next, we block off time for essential activities we ideally want to accomplish in a perfect week. For instance, we should mark when we want to wake up and do our morning routine and when we want to sleep. We can also block time for hitting the gym, doing creative work such as writing, and hanging out with friends. When blocking time in our Ideal Week Calendar, we ensure that the time we spend aligns with the goals we set in the previous methods.
For more resources on planning for a new year, the Annual Report Framework and Three Ways to Change are the tools and thoughts I've noted before in Weekly I/O.