Let’s do the bad news first: you have about a 1% chance of keeping that New Year’s resolution you set for yourself, according to a 2023 study of 1000 US adults.
But here’s the good news: there are clear actions you can take to help you set better resolutions and keep them for the long term.
Even better, these actions are useful not just in January, but any time you’re working with intention to grow and develop yourself or your team. If you want to wrap up 2026 having built new habits, these three surprising tips will help you succeed.
1. Be clear on what you want, and why
Often, when setting a resolution or identifying a goal, we name the destination but not why it’s worth the effort. Getting clear on both the goal and why it matters can help you keep commitments.
Imagine you’d like to delegate more at work. What you want is to offload some work to others. There may be several reasons why you want to do this: to better balance workloads, to create bandwidth in your day for more strategic thinking or to develop your direct reports by giving them stretch assignments.
Being clear on our “why” can be motivating; it gives us an aspirational reason to keep our commitments.
Here are some other “wants and whys”:
- I want to start strength training so that I can continue hiking into my 70s.
- I want to gain control over my inbox so I don’t miss important information and don’t feel stressed by the clutter.
- I want to celebrate my team’s contributions so they know how grateful I am and feel a sense of accomplishment.
- I want to network more so that I am better prepared for a job search this fall.
2. Name your obstacles
Once you’re clear on the “wants and whys,” take time to name your obstacles. It can help to “WOOP” your goal. WOOP is a research-backed goal-setting framework developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen.
WOOP stands for:
- Wish
- Outcome
- Obstacle
- Plan
In our delegation example, we’ve already established our wish and outcome: we want to improve our delegation to have more time for other tasks and to develop our team members.
Obstacles to delegation might include not fully trusting my team members’ readiness or the suspicion that it will take more time to train someone else than to do the work myself.
By naming these obstacles, I can make sure my plan includes ways to overcome them. I might create a training process that grows readiness, or invite the team member to shadow me as I do the work. Or I might tally up the time it takes me over the course of the year to do this work and confirm that yes, there is significant time to be saved by training someone else now.
Identifying your obstacles gives you an opportunity to create a better plan to succeed. Here are potential obstacles for other goals:
- Strength training: lack of equipment
- Cluttered inbox: my systems fail me when I get busy
- Celebrating more: making time when other things feel urgent
- Networking: not knowing where to start
3. Create accountability for your plans
Before reading further, try this: Write your name with your non-dominant hand, then immediately write it again with your dominant hand. Notice the difference? That awkward, effortful feeling with your non-dominant hand is exactly what building new habits feels like. Your brain wants to default to the “dominant hand” of your old patterns.
When you’ve spent your whole career doing things one way, it’s hard to learn a new process. Any attempt to do something new is likely to feel awkward and effortful. It will be easier to revert to your old ways.
Building accountability into your plans is essential. But to find new means of reinforcing the behaviors you want, ask yourself what has helped you keep commitments in the past. Your answers might include:
- Making the goal measurable.
- Finding a partner who will check in on you.
- Blocking time on your calendar and adding items to your to-do list.
- Attaching a new practice to something you’re already consistent at doing. (This is called habit stacking.)
- Setting milestone rewards.
Here’s how some of these ideas might play out:
- Delegation: Share your goal with your leader and ask her to request updates once a month.
- Strength training: Schedule gym sessions with a close friend and reward yourself with new equipment after one month of consistency.
- Cluttered inbox: Plan to scrub your inbox as you drink your first cup of coffee each morning.
- Celebrating more: Instead of waiting for after a project to schedule time for celebration, reserve time on schedules early to make sure it doesn’t get forgotten.
- Networking: Make it measurable by planning for one event per month; schedule January and February now, and set a calendar reminder for March 1 to schedule more.
These ideas work for many people, but the best ideas are very specific to you and your own motivations. Dig deep to find accountability processes that fit your goal, work style and personality. A vice president I know created a sticker chart for himself and gave himself a gold star for each day he stuck to his resolution!
Quick start
Answering these questions to get started
- What do I really want to happen?
- Why does this matter?
- What are my obstacles?
- How will I work around my obstacles?
- When I’ve been consistent with new efforts in the past, what worked?
- In light of all this, what is my plan?
Resources for all your professional New Year’s Resolutions
One way I motivate myself to stay consistent with my goals is to keep learning about the topic. New insights can be inspiring. To close, I’m sharing links to articles that can help you with some of your workplace resolutions this year. Good luck!
- Become more mindful or self-aware
- Give better feedback
- Make more time to think
- Have better meetings with your direct reports
- Build your strategic capacity
- Decrease my stress
- Get better at handling conflict
Finally, remember: The goal isn’t perfection — it’s progress. Even if you stumble, the systems you’ve built will help you get back on track faster than willpower alone ever could.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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