How to Follow Through With Goals

So you have a goal for the new year, and you’re excited about it! But in the back of your mind, you know that most new year’s resolutions don’t last for a whole year. A lot of them are lucky to get as far as February. So how can you follow through with your goals, knowing that the odds are stacked against you?

Welcome your off days

The trick is to welcome the uncertainty, the challenge, the likelihood that you’ll fall off the wagon. Instead of seeing the days when you don’t stick to your resolution as failures, see them as expected opportunities.

Of course you’re not yet the kind of person who accomplished your goal—that’s why it’s a goal. The process ahead of you is not just a process of executing your goal, but of becoming the person who can follow through with that goal.

Every off day is a day you get to learn what you need in order to become that person. This means you don’t need to focus on accomplishment so much as noticing.

And that’s why I recommend daily intention tracking.

Setting a daily intention

Every morning, notice where you’re at with your goal and how you’re feeling that day and set an intention for the day. Many days, this will be an intention to bring you closer to accomplishing your goal, like

• spend 30 minutes writing (if your goal is to write a memoir)
• run 2 miles (if your goal is to run a marathon)
• build a page of my app (if your goal is to teach yourself programming by building an app)

Some days, your intention will need to be something that doesn’t directly contribute to your goal, but supports it, like:

• read other memoirs for inspiration
• cross-train to keep my joints healthy
• try out competitors’ apps to learn what I like and don’t like

And some days, you’ll find you just plain need a break from your goal. You might set an intention like:

• read fiction to take a break from memoirs
• take a nap
• no intention today, just go with the flow

All of these are good. The idea is to be intentional, not to work towards your goal every single day.

Make the daily intention a habit

Of course, this will only work if you can actually remember to set your daily intention. So find a “hook” you can hang this morning habit onto, like brushing your teeth or making your coffee—something you already do regularly. Put a reminder on that hook, like a post-it note on the mirror where you brush your teeth, a journal next to your coffeemaker, or an alarm on your phone.

Now that you have a way to remember to set your daily intention, you need to make it quick and easy enough to do in a moment. Decide where you’ll track your intention—I’ve made a free digital tracker for you, but you can choose anything that comes easily to you.

Don’t stress about finding the perfect intention. Just pick one each day. Building the habit is worth more than doing it perfectly.

Reviewing your daily intention

Now you need one more habit—a nightly review of your intention. Again, pick a regular time and place to do this, create a reminder, and keep it as simple as humanly possible. This daily intention practice is inspired by a similar practice taught in Aletheia Coaching, but I like to simplify the review step because I don’t have a long attention span at night! So I suggest two questions:

1. Did I carry out my intention today?
2. Why or why not?

Establishing what caused you to do or not do something is actually an incredibly complex philosophical question, so I don’t recommend getting bogged down in it when you’re doing your daily review! Just look for one, maybe two factors that made it easier or harder for you to follow through with your intention that day. On days when you remembered your intention but chose not to act on it, jot down the feeling that made you decide against it.

Factors that made it easier to follow through are accelerators, things that get you to your goal faster. Factors that made it harder to follow through are obstacles, things that get in the way of you reaching your goal. Discovering either one of these is a win, because they teach you what you need in order to follow through with your goal.

It’s really important not to teach your subconscious to fear doing your review on days that you didn’t follow through with your intention. Give yourself a pat on the back every time you do your nightly review, no matter what happened during the day. The review is not just a grade you give yourself, or a time to decide whether you had a good day or a bad day—it’s a golden opportunity to engage in the process of becoming the person who can achieve your goal.

Review your reviews

Every so often, look over your accelerators and your obstacles.

How can you put more accelerators in your life?

How can you remove or lessen your obstacles?

Some of these will be low-hanging fruit, where as soon as you start to notice “oh, this helps,” you’ll just start doing it more often and seeing slightly better results. Others, of course, will be hard to change. So then you can dig a little deeper in your review.

Are your accelerators the exact opposite of your obstacles, like “I do well after a good night’s sleep and poorly after a bad night’s sleep”? That tells you that the factor involved is very important and not yet settled. In this example, you might benefit from switching your focus to the goal of improving your sleep and then come back to your original goal.

Or do you find that your accelerators tend to be external and your obstacles tend to be internal? For instance, you might find that your accelerators are things like:

• I blocked off my writing time on my calendar so my partner would know not to interrupt me
• I turned off my phone while I was writing so I wouldn’t get distracted
• I worked out in the morning so I’d have time to write in the evening

And that your obstacles are things like:

• I thought about how I’d feel if people actually read my memoir and I got really nervous about being that visible
• I compared myself to another writer and felt like I’m not actually good enough at this to write a book
• I couldn’t decide how to write the next chapter so I didn’t even start writing today

This kind of situation shows you that you’re doing well at setting up your environment for success, but your emotional blockers are holding you back. Learning time management skills and finding anti-distraction apps can be really helpful for addressing logistical obstacles. But when your obstacles are primarily emotional, those kinds of practical changes aren’t likely to make the difference in following through with your goals. Instead of wasting your time fiddling with your to do list more and more, consider doing some inner work to start dissolving your emotional blockers.

Try it out

I’ve made a free Daily Intention Tracker for 2024 that you can get with my newsletter.

• It emphasizes that Yes and No are equally good answers to your daily review.
• It has space to log your accelerators and obstacles each day, and to notice the most important ones each month.
• Each month has space for your current goal so you can keep it top of mind and change it month to month if you realize that, for instance, you need to get your sleep in order before you can become a marathoner.

I hope it helps you flip the script on New Year’s Resolutions from a thing you succeed or fail at, to a learning experience that helps you grow no matter what happens.