Turn Your New Year’s Resolutions into a Project

If you’re like me, you have had a few challenges with achieving your New Year’s resolutions. Willpower, lack of focus, not really your resolution but one that someone else thought would be good for you, not knowing how to go about achieving the resolution. These are all things that have kept me from being as successful as I would have liked to have been in the past. So what can we do to be successful in achieving our New Year’s Resolution? Last year I decided to attack my resolutions a little differently. I decided to turn them into a Project and to use Project Management and Goal Setting techniques to successfully achieve my Resolutions. After all, I am a Project Manager. The process you should go through is as follows:

1. Document your resolution in as much detail and as specifically as possible. In other words, identify what it is that you want to happen and by when.
2. Identify at least 3 reasons why you want to achieve each resolution. The more ‘whys’ you can come up with, the better chance you have of being successful. (If you can’t come up with at least 3 ‘whys’ then maybe this really isn’t your resolution)
3. Consider each resolution and identify the actions you will need to take to achieve it.
4. Identify how these actions relate to each other and schedule their completion as part of an Achievement Plan for each resolution.
5. Gather together each of the Achievement Plans into a Resolutions Achievement Plan(RAP).
6. Include a review of the RAP activities as part of your normal day-to-day planning process and include necessary activities into your normal Activity Planner.
7. Monitor the achievement of your actions on a timely basis. Take whatever action is necessary to stay on target and keep your RAP up to date.

Let me give you 4 hints on how to keep yourself motivated and focused on achievement.

1. Read your resolutions and the reasons why you want to achieve them at least once a day and preferably twice.
2. Visualize yourself having already achieved the resolution and while you are reading them put that vision in your head.
3. Get a buddy, let them know what you are doing and ask them to help hold you to your RAP by asking for achievement information.
4. Whenever you are trying to do something or not do it ask yourself this question, “Will doing this take me closer to or further away from achieving my resolutions?” Once you get that answer decide whether you want to do it or not.

The last thing is to ‘Have Fun’ doing this, remember to enjoy the day-to-day journey and you will have a much greater chance of achieving whatever it is that you truly want to achieve in 2016. Good Luck and Have Fun.

Let me know how things turn out.

Richard

Richard Morreale is a professional speaker, author, trainer, and c-suite consultant specializing in Program and Project Management, Change Management and Success Strategies. For more information or to book Richard as a speaker email him at richard@richardmorreale.com or ring him at 336 598 2793.