Master Your 2020 New Year’s Resolution in 4 Simple Steps

Reading Time: 4 minutes.

New Year’s Resolution is a western tradition to set personal objectives for the upcoming year. People list unwanted behaviors to lose, personal goals to achieve, and new habits to which to get used. Then over the year, they try to meet them, although, for the most, it is hardly doable. Statistics say that about 40% of USA residents make New Year’s resolutions, but only 18% accomplish them.

Using 1st things 1st to prioritize your activities

Wishful thinking is good, but achiever’s mindset is even better. What if instead of trying to achieve a long list of questionable goals, you would prioritize them and seek to complete the most relevant ones? Why lose yourself in the magnitude if you can focus on the essential?

Using the strategic prioritizer 1st things 1st, you can prioritize your New Year’s Resolution, so that you could see which activities to aim for and which to let go. Let’s see how to do that.

⚙️ Project setup

From the project templates, choose “New Year’s Resolution”.

The project creation wizard will guide you through the most important questions:

1. Change or keep the project title and description:

2. Decide how to name things. The preselected values suggest evaluating activities by criteria. You can change it to evaluating goals by personal values, or anything else:

3. Change or keep the timeframe. By default, it’s the full year from the first till the last day:

4. Choose some criteria from a suggested list. You’ll be able to enter some more criteria as free text later.

5. Choose some activities from a suggested list. You’ll be able to enter some more activities as free text later too.

Now when you created the project, let’s explore the main steps of prioritization. 

🧭 Step 1. Review and edit criteria

Now you can edit the list of criteria and change their importance or evaluation type. The default importance for all of them is 100%, and the evaluation type is stars (you will see them in step 3).

For example, for me, the most important criteria are:

• Interesting experience
• Valuable in the long term
• Achievable
• Affordable

💡 Step 2. Review and edit activities

In the next step we see the list of our chosen activities, for example:

• Read 10 books.
• Get in shape.
• Sanitize your phone weekly.
• Listen to audiobooks while traveling.
• Write a gratitude journal.
• Nurture real friendships.
• Save money.
• Write a business plan.

Now we can change their titles and descriptions.

Let’s bulk-add a couple of custom activities, for example:

• Visit Expo 2020 in Dubai.
• Start a company.

🎚 Step 3. Evaluate activities by criteria

Then think about each activity from the perspective of each criterion. For example, writing a gratitude journal is an interesting experience for me (5 stars), but getting in shape is not so interesting (2 stars). Listening to audiobooks while traveling very affordable (5 stars), but going to Dubai for Expo 2020 is not so affordable (2 stars).

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📊 Step 4. Analyze priorities

The prioritizer shows calculated and sorted activities grouped into the ones:

• to choose for sure,
• to consider, and
• to skip.

My most essential activities for 2020 are to write a gratitude journal and to nurture real friendships. The most questionable activity is traveling to Dubai for Expo 2020.

Final words

After prioritizing your New Year’s Resolution, try to set up a schedule when you will do what, and try to stick to it. That will increase your chances of achieving your essential goals. But worry not, even if you don’t make all of it this year, because another year will follow afterward.

Check out the strategic prioritizer at www.1st-things-1st.com.

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Cover photo by Kelly Sikkema.