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A New Kind of New Yearâ€TMs Resolution

January 04, 2015

Welcome to 2015.  Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?  I haven’t.  I don’t really get into New Year’s resolutions.  However, I am programatic about planning goals for my pursuits in each new year.

Over the years I’ve found that setting single year-long goals for your life and/or business can be daunting.  Personally I need more achievable goals blocked out in shorter timeframes.

I’ll share what I mean; perhaps it will help you too, or at least give you ideas that you can run with in your own way.

If you’re familiar with software development/programming you may have heard the term “sprints.† A sprint is when a team of software programmers define specific parts of a software that they’re going to work on developing or improving.  Once they have their objective and timeframe (usually something short like, two weeks, a month or maybe 90 days) they focus only on that objective to “sprint†toward its completion by the imposed deadline.

That’s an approach that can work with goals if you’re often overwhelmed by longer term deadlines like, an entire year.

Maybe you commit the month of January to updating your business website with all those little, but necessary changes you’ve been meaning to make but haven’t gotten around to.  Then in February maybe you “sprint†toward writing a short how-to ebook that you give away to help attract new email sign-ups on your newly updated website.

Or... 

Perhaps you commit to light exercise by walking for 30 minutes 3 times a week over the next 90 days.  If the habit forms and you decide to continue, great.  If not, maybe you try yoga for the next 90 days after that.

The point is you don’t necessarily have to commit to an entire year to accomplish good things in your life and your business.  The bottom line is to continue to develop new “sprints†throughout the year.  If the results of the “sprints†you develop will contribute positively to the health of your life and business then you’re on the right track.

For example, in December (last month), I just did a “sprint†updating my various websites to get them ready for my 2015 plans.  I also did a writing “sprint†where I developed several blog posts for my various sites.  I ended up writing about 1,000 words a day as a result.

Here’s the magical thing that’s happened...as a result of the writing “sprint†I seemed to have developed a new writing habit.  It doesn’t seem as difficult anymore for me to write 300 or even 500 words in a single sitting.  

In other words, after writing 1,000 words a day for a month I’ve conditioned myself to write more and by having focused on doing so intensely for a short period of time it’s much easier to write even half as many words where as before writing 500 words felt overwhelming.

Plus, since I’ve been writing more, more creative ideas have been bubbling up to the surface for me more often.  I plan to continue trying to write 1,000 words a day because I’ve seen progress in a short amount of time not only in my writing but in the additional benefits it produces for me.

Finally, all those site updates and all that writing resulted in paid writing projects; a positive and healthy benefit for my business.

If this “sprint†idea sounds like something interesting you might want to try, here are a few tools to help you:

One, is a simple 21 Day Make or Break a Habit guide book and journal (Amazon affiliate).  I actually used this earlier this year and have continued the exercising habit that I initially started with the 21 day “sprint†I conducted with this book.  I even wrote a post about the book.

Two, is a bit more sophisticated, but it can be really useful to help keep you organized with several “sprints†throughout the year.  Goals On Track goal and task management software (affiliate) is very useful, and I have also used this as well.  What I like about this software is that you can have daily emails that it sends to you to remind you to complete various tasks toward your goals within your set goal timeframe.  Plus, as you complete tasks the software visually shows you your percentage of progress toward meeting your goal by your deadline.

I hope that helps.  What do you want to accomplish this year? 

Thanks,