It’s early December and you know what that means…New Year’s Resolutions are just around the corner.

While we often think of resolutions as a one time event, (that is, declaring one’s intent at the start of the calendar year), resolutions stretch across seconds, minutes, hours, days, and weeks.

In essence, practicing, and keeping, one’s resolution is all about planning and managing your time well.

In this post, I offer several tips to help you do just that.

Set deadlines for your resolution.

Resolutions often fail because they are vaguely based “sometime” in the future.

There is no specific end date, other than the end of the calendar year, at best.

It’s akin to saying you’re going on vacation…without selecting specific dates for your holiday.

An easy way to avoid this “sometime” syndrome is to set a deadline, or a series of mini-deadlines for yourself.

This is to ensure you’ll actually work towards your resolution.

You’re no longer concerned as to when it will be accomplished (you’ve already covered that with your deadline), but as to how you’ll accomplish it.

Spend a dedicated amount of time each day towards your resolution.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s easy to declare a resolution. The challenge lies in working on that resolution a little bit at a time.

No matter what goal you’ve set for yourself, set aside a small amount of time each day for you to actively work towards that goal. You can schedule this task directly into your calendar or leave it as a to-do to be accomplished by the end of the day. 

During this time, you need to focus and complete what you’d said you do during that time.

If you resolved to be more active, you’d make it a point to get in fifteen minutes of brisk walking in the afternoon, every day. If you resolved to eat more fruits and vegetables, you’d sit down at lunch and make sure you ate one fruit and one vegetable. And so on, and so forth.

Don’t let past times negatively influence the present.

Oops. You ate a giant banana split three days into your new dieting routine. Should you call yourself a horrible person and say you’ll never lose those 15 extra pounds? Absolutely not!

Always remember this: you can’t change the past. It’s gone, forever. Sure, while it may not have been a good idea to indulge in that ice cream treat, you can’t undo what you’ve done. Let it go.

What you can do, however, is pay careful and close attention to the present. Now is the perfect time to make a fresh start. There is no reason why you can’t be a success. Don’t confuse a one-time misstep with failure. Keep your focus on your goals.

Review your misstep to see exactly where you went wrong. How might you prevent a similar situation from happening in future? What steps can you take right now to get you back on track?

In the example above, you might decide to avoid driving past the ice cream parlor when you’re hungry, or not skip meals.

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How about you? Do you have a resolution for the new year? If so, what is it, and how do you plan to make it a success? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!