We’re finally into the second month of this year. I’m sure I’m not alone and feeling that January lasted much longer than the 31 days the calendar says it contained!
This is possibly a good time to pause and look at the progress you’ve made on any goals you committed to for 2024.
What’s really important at this time of year is to allow yourself some compassion if you haven’t made the progress you expected. It’s not too late to make a fresh start if progress has been very slow. Or even non-existent.
If progress to date hasn’t been what you’d hope for, there’s probably a very good reason for that. What I’d like to do in this post is flag some of the common reasons for a lack of progress. To give you a chance to make a fresh start and make the remainder of 2024 the kind of year you’d like to have
Reminder: There’s no obligation to have goals
And before I go any further, I think it’s really important to state that this year doesn’t have to be a year where everything is achieved. Or indeed, where anything is achieved. You can have a great year by simply maintaining what you have, or even reducing the number of things going on in your life.
In my latest YouTube video, I outline the benefits of having an overarching theme for the year and describe my own theme for 2024, which is having a year of less. Change doesn’t have to mean “more” or “success”.
And of course if you haven’t done any goal-setting or planning for what you want to do differently in 2024, that’s absolutely fine too. There’s no law that says your planning and goal-setting must take place at the start of the calendar year.
So, what stops us from making progress on our goals?
1. A lack of action
A very simple first reason is that we didn’t take the necessary action. What do I mean by this? Well, goal-setting is one thing. Sitting down to write some goals, making sure that they are SMART, and the kind of thing that is possible for you to do in your context.
And then we neatly file them away and forget about them, because we’ve ticked the mental box that says “goals sorted”. But what we need to do after we’ve set the goals is turn that into action. So consider what kind of practical steps you’ve taken to move towards your goals in the month of January, and what you might have done more of our less of to move you towards that target.
If it’s a series of consecutive steps that’s going to get you to your goal, simply focus on the next practical step you can take, and create a deadline to work towards. No matter how small, this is movement in the direction that’s important to you.
2. Misplaced optimism about goals
If you wanted January 1st to represent a real fresh start for you, that’s absolutely fine. However, it’s also important to be realistic about the kind of changes you can hope to achieve. One way of being realistic is to review the year gone by to learn from it. How did your goal-setting and goal attainment go in 2023?
We can fall prey to a misplaced optimism about what we’re actually able to do differently. In part, this can be because of the disconnection between “present me” and “future me”. Research has consistently demonstrated that we can even think of our future selves as a different person. This can help explain common problems with savings and pensions, and the investments we ought to make in our physical health for future mobility and wellbeing.
“If we can treat those distant selves as if they are close others — people we care about, love, and want to support — then we can start making choices for them that appreciably improve our lives now and later.”
Hal Hershfield, ‘Your Future Self’.
When it comes to goals, we may fall into this trap, believing that “future me” is going to be capable of far more self-control, discipline and action than the me I have known for all these years! So take a step back and consider just how optimistic you’ve been about what is achievable. There is nothing wrong with scaling your goals down to something more realistic and more suitable for present day you. The progress you make as “me today” will be gratefully acknowledged by “me tomorrow”.
3. Too many goals
Goal-setting as an activity is actually quite straightforward. If you have a model for what makes for good goals, you can ensure that you’re being sufficiently specific, time-bound and aligned with your values and all of the other stuff that makes for good goals.
In fact, it’s so easy, you might get caught up in the excitement and go overboard. This leaves you with lots of goals in the present moment, and once you start to look at taking practical action, it can very quickly feel overwhelming.
Effective goal-setting needs to include an appropriate number of goals, a number of goals that you can actually practically work on.
If you look at the goals you’ve set yourself for 2024, and it feels overwhelming, simply pick one to prioritise. Save focusing on the others until you’ve completed the first one (or at least made significant progress) and bring all of your focus and effort to bear on that prioritised goal. Rather than feeling stuck and overwhelmed because there’s too much stuff to work on, now you’re making some progress on one of these important goals
4. Your goals don’t “feel” right
I bristle slightly when I hear the word “should” being used when it comes to goal-setting. “I should lose some weight”. “I should complete that course”. “I should participate in Dry January”.
It’s so important that the goals we set for ourselves are really authentic to us. That is, they reflect the kind of person that we want to be. Goals should be aligned with our values, and when we don’t have that alignment, we can feel social pressure to achieve something, or we can feel that this goal has been put upon us by external forces.
Whatever the feeling, a lack of authenticity means it’s not something that’s going to lead to successful attainment of the goal. The action point here is to ensure that any goal you said for yourself sits well with your values, the things that you believe matter in life.
So if it’s a goal to run a 5K race that could be in alignment with the value you call “physical well-being”. If the goal is to complete a painting course, this goal could be an alignment with the value you call “creativity”. If the goal is to secure a professional accreditation this year, it could be in alignment with the value known as “Career focus”.
You can see where I’m going. Well-crafted goals act like a magnet in the future, drawing us towards successful completion. If we don’t authentically want to achieve them, it’s going to feel like an incredible amount of work to get there and we will be very tempted to give up. So, while values and goals are different, we can use them together to great effect!
5. “I’m not as good as them…”
When you look at the progress you’ve made so far this year, what are you basing that on? If you have some kind of objective measure, that’s one thing. But if your idea of progress is based on comparison with other people – whether those around you in the real world, or an idealised picture of yourself – then no matter the progress you make, it’s not going to feel anything like enough.
Avoid comparisons, wherever possible. They rarely inclusive and detailed enough. Progress towards goals should ideally be made on an objective measure. For example, the number of days you have exercised as planned. The number of words you’ve written in your novel. The number of days you have practised mindfulness before starting your working day. This is progress.
If you insist on making one comparison, make sure it’s the comparison between you today, and yesterday this can give you an insight into the direction of travel the speed of Travel and remind you that you are making progress.
In summary
Hopefully I haven’t added to any sense of pressure you were feeling when it comes to making changes this year. I want to underline the optional nature of goals. You only need to set them if it’s helpful. But if you are going to set goals for yourself, ensure you’re being realistic, that you’re tracking your progress in a helpful way, and that you’re working towards something that you authentically want in your life.
In Ep 152 of ‘My Pocket Psych‘, I’m joined by Dr. Rachael Skews for a discussion about all the different ways goal-setting can trip us up. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the interview below.
