On New Year’s Day, New Beginnings

It’s a tradition. On New Year’s, we make resolutions. Most don’t get carried through, there Is some use in procrastination, it tells you that whatever you planned on doing is probably not that important.
For those however that planned on doing something critical, how do you ensure that what you planned actually comes to pass in the time you intended.
Cut Through The Nonsense, Focus On What’s Important
Your resolution (basically a goal) has to truly matter to you, it can’t be someone else’s goal for you, if it is .. you are wasting your time.  Life is short, don’t live someone else’s life.
Your goal should ideally be a MUST HAVE, if it is not, your own mental inertia will prevent you from getting it done, Steve Pressfield calls this the resistance, the internal enemy that tells you that you are good enough as you are, no need to get better (read Steven’s Pressfield War of Art to understand the Resistance).
Your goal should be important enough for you to make changes to your life to achieve it, or again, you may just have to accept that it’s a waste of your time or you just think it’s important to you.
Your goal should be time bound.
The best goals are simple, the planning to achieve them, however, are complicated.
Example of a simple goal: Get a Human Colony to settle in Mars.
How to achieve the said goal: Complicated – Complex
Goals for the year: lose 10 pounds
How to achieve the said goal: eliminate negative people, lifestyle food changes, exercise, visualization, food journal (this is complicated)
I am not a traditional person, I do however set goals, and occasionally I set those goals at the beginning of a calendar year if something is important and will require life changes. It is best not to wait to get started.
Otherwise, it’s probably not that important.
Be Accountable Or Go Away
Peer pressure is important, get a peer or a senior colleague or a junior colleague to hold you accountable to your goal, if this seems too extra you may be a joker and not be really interested in achieving anything worthwhile. Can you Pay for it or delegate It Away?
If you can afford to let someone else achieve your goal, you should consider it. Be careful with this method though, sometimes going through the process IS the goal. For example, If your goal is creating a long-term strategy document to raise sales in your organization, going through the process refines your thinking, giving it to a consultant may look like you achieved something, but are you invested in the plan or is it just some shiny new toy by a sharply dressed outsider?
For most goals, however, some aspects should be delegated, so if you want to lose weight, hire a personal trainer to design training regimens and they can double as an accountability partner (that you can fire).
Tools
MS Excel, Notepad, MS Project, to do lists, Tracking apps and more help you streamline repeatable tasks and put your goal in a plan form you can see.
Sebastian Marshall over at Ultraworking has some free (yes, free) tools that you can use for work efficiency and for planning.
https://www.ultraworking.com/events/dec-30-monthly-planning
Using the paradigms noted, Prioritization(How important is the goal to you), Systems (schedule, plans, accountability), and tools  (Gant Charts, Risk Maps).
You may just give yourself a chance to achieve your goals.
If one of your goals this year is to start an online business, email me at info@shootfish.xyz
Let’s give you a free consultation and build you a turnkey e-commerce website or a blog depending on your needs.
If you find this halfway useful, why don’t you go ahead and forward / share it with someone you care about that you want to see succeed in their goals?
Our next email, we will look at achieving impossible goals. For example, World Peace.
But we will start with something simpler, how to put 80 hours of work in 20 hours.
Until then, Don’t Be Good, Be Great.
References (unlisted)
Seneca – On the Shortness of life
Steven Pressfield – War Of Art
Steven Pressfield – Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t
Elon Musk – https://www.spacex.com/mars