A good way to set goals for yourself is the acronym SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

Specific because people set goals for themselves that are really airy fairy and don’t actually mean anything, like “I’d like to be healthier next year” what does that mean? What exactly do you plan to do?

Measurable because if you set a goal with a specific measurable metric involved, you can know exactly that you met it. For example, “I want to go for a walk every day in the summer”. Did you or didn’t you?

Achievable because people often set goals for themselves that they can’t possibly accomplish and waste effort and then feel bad because they failed at something they couldn’t do anything but fail at.

Relevant because what goals you set must be something that actually affects your own personal life. I hate to use this example, but people worry about their carbon footprint, when their personal carbon footprint doesn’t matter and they could be focusing on things that actually matter such as improving themselves or finding relevant ways to reduce waste or improve their lives. If they aren’t relevant it’s easy to rationalize not meeting your goals.

Timely because you need to have a timeframe in which to achieve your goals or they just stay out forever. When I wrote The Graysonian Ethic, I wanted it published before my son was born, so I knew exactly how many chapters I needed to write every week to do so in a year. In the end I successfully published on time and it’s a good thing I did because afterwards I didn’t have time for something like that!

Once you start this sort of thing, it becomes something you can constantly do, and can change course or create new goals once you succeed at one set.