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It’s almost a New Year. What are you going to do to make this year better than ever?

In most Western countries, the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of shopping, eating, and family gatherings. Many of us will finish with one last night of debauchery this evening, and a day on the couch watching parades and football or in the kitchen enjoying still more delicious food tomorrow. After that, it’s back to “real” life and work.

It’s great fun to have this annual break from the routine and to reconnect with family and friends that we may not see the rest of the year, but it’s no accident that every New Year is accompanied by Resolutions. It’s also no accident that most of those Resolutions will be history by February. The good news is, that a little self-reflection and a reasonable plan of action can go a long way toward making those personal and career resolutions attainable. Here’s a process that I’m constantly tweaking, but basically works for me:

1. Form an Image of the Future. It’s impossible to move ahead if you don’t know where you want to go, so take this step seriously. Close your eyes and think about what you want your life to look like a year from now. In keeping with the principles of Goal-Free Living be somewhat loose in your definitions using the analogy of a compass, not a map. For example, I want to put a lot of effort into expanding this blog in the coming year, and providing a lot of value to my readers. When I imagine that part of my future, I won’t set specific traffic targets or monetary numbers. Instead, I’ll picture myself writing, filled with happiness and receiving lots of useful feedback.
2. Assess Where You Are Now. Once you know the direction you want to head, you need to figure out where you are. Be honest with yourself, but remember to be kind as well. Use quantitative measures as much as possible to keep emotions and judgement out of it. In my example of wanting to bring more value to my blog, I can look at the number of posts I wrote in 2007 and see that I averaged less than my ideal of 3-4 posts per week. This gives me a foundation to build from.
3. Pick 1 Behavior You Can Change Right Now. In my experience, the key to successful personal change is to work on one thing at a time. The more concrete the behavior is the better. Define what you are going to do to change your behavior, how you’re going to do it, and when. To increase my blog’s value, I have decided to dedicate time every Sunday to generating content ideas and drafting some posts for the week. Usually Sunday afternoon is downtime for me, so it’s not a big sacrifice to spend a couple of hours with a mug of tea outlining posts.
4. Set a Reminder to Check-In Next Month. This step is critical. In my observation, people fail to regularly monitor their progress toward their ideal futures. When we don’t check in with ourselves regularly, we’ll inevitably end up in our pajamas next December 31 wondering what we did wrong. Set a regular appointment with yourself for “compass calibration” where you go through the same visualization and assessment process on a monthly basis. If you’ve struggled with your behavioral change, rethink your strategies and make changes as needed. If you’ve been successful begin to work on another behavior. At the end of January, if I’ve become comfortable with my weekly posting routine, I’ll work on some of the marketing aspects of running a blog that I haven’t explored yet.

In the course of our lives and careers, we need to learn to react to changes that happen to us, but it is also important to proactively cause changes that will take us in the direction of our ideal futures. I hope this process helps you in setting your direction for the coming year!

If you have suggestions for improving this process, please share with all of us in the comments.

Photo courtesy of Sagoland.

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