Stop Setting New Year's Resolution - why you should use systems instead

Designed with Canva

Setting Goals…

What have I learned so far after learning to write whatever I wish to achieve on paper?

Every first of January, I do this and I willingly forget about it.

Then I come back to whatever I’d written and ended up achieving 75% of the goals.

Even though I didn’t achieve all, it was always a healthy way of achieving my goals without putting pressure on myself.

I don’t check up on the written goals. I just try to keep a bit of it on my mind and give myself the chance to explore.

However, there have always been cons.

And that’s not being mindful of how much is left or much time is required to achieve a certain goal, even though I’m aware of deadlines.

I just don’t like pressure.

What kills creativity a lot in humans is the pressure from within.

Setting deadlines is great, but what if your goals also depend on external factors?

Let’s say your goal in 3 to 6 months from now is to land a high-paying remote job…

To make that goal a reality, you will have to put in a lot of work and effort.

Even though you are determined, getting that ideal job doesn’t depend totally on you.

Applying 30 times in a month without results can really get someone discouraged.

In fact, you can apply throughout the whole 6 months and still end up unemployed.

And thus, such a person gets disappointed.

It’s not you, it’s just life and it’s normal.

I pray this never happens to us. However, it’s best to be truthful to ourselves.

But what if there is another way to set goals?

I call it having a goal system, instead of just goals.

In life, chances are number games. We deal with numbers every day.

The best way to achieve goals is to play number games.

Here is the deal...

If you are so determined to get a job this year, decide how many times you will apply for jobs.

Let’s say, 4 times a week.

That makes it 16 times a month.

Instead of focusing on the deadline that you don’t have control over, you have a system in place.

You can apply this to any goal you are setting. Do you want to upskill? Dedicate 2 hours every day to it.

Whenever I fail to achieve a certain goal that I really wanted, I sulk inward. I get bitter.

Notwithstanding, we have goals to achieve every day even if we don’t write them down.

For instance, if you fail to wash your clothes on a particular weekend, how do you feel? I feel terrible inside.

Even though you will have to do the task another time, you will have to sacrifice another task for it. Or your leisure time for it.

Whether you agree or not, neglecting small tasks most often causes depression for us. Maybe most of us are not even depressed, maybe we are depressed because we are lazy.

Procrastination is the biggest vehicle of chronic laziness.

If you mind changing things around and stop living in your head, then start small from achieving your daily goals.

Every night, before you sleep, write down the next day's activities you want to do.

Schedule everything and put intervals of breaks in between the schedule. Try that and see if things improve.

We compound tasks for ourselves a lot and leave the tasks for the last hours, which isn’t healthy.

It has always been quality over quantity. Most times, smart work pays long-term, not hard work. We've termed lack of consistency as "hard work" with loads of tasks. That's why we lack creativity even when we are busy.

Busy and dizzy. Lol.

Reduce your loads, be consistent with your schedule, invent your own system, apply the system and watch things change for the better.

Goal setting is a very crucial skill we will never get tired of learning. It’s like a matrimonial home, learning will never stop.

The only way to ultimate happiness is to always achieve whatever we want, but every little cost of the goals never depends solely on us. It’s always better to have a system in place.

I hope we keep getting better.