Days away from the turn of the year, many of us feel the potential to start new projects and revitalise old ones – a roadmap to the ‘you’ you want to become. And as with all roadmaps, New Year’s resolutions are always better when you start with a good plan.
The best kind of plan, in this case, is a scaffold. A scaffold is a set of looser rules to guide you, rather than a straitjacket to lock you into one, unbending path. Where this helps is when life inevitably gets in the way – there will be times you have to miss a streak or fall short of your weekly goal. Broad guiding principles provide just enough give to prevent bumps in the road from feeling like total failures.
The best guiding principles are ones that are realistic about the limits of our distractible, whimsical, faddish human brains. They respect our energy and concentration levels, as well as acknowledging when and how we work best.
Below are some of the most sure-fire scaffolding tricks I’ve personally used to guarantee realistic resolutions for 2025!
Daily tactics for Realistic Resolutions
The old adage little and often really is your best friend. Daily tactics are just this – short, snappy and non-negotiable habits that keep you learning and improving all the time. They can be super short, in fact – five minutes completing a lesson on an app, for example – but they must be easy enough to perform regularly. Think about putting together a little regime of three or four tactics that you can perform each and every day.
Tactics can evolve over the year, too, as they’re easy to tweak if something isn’t quite right. The most important thing is to have your core of easy tide-me-overs, and stick to them.
Lark or owl?
Talking about regularity of habits, an important question to ask yourself is when are you at your most effective and energetic? My biggest mistake when making any kind of self-development lists in the past was over-optimism about my energy levels. I’d see myself getting up at dawn for a learning session, working all day, then scheduling classes and activities at night. I love learning – so why wouldn’t I plan learning into my entire day?
You can guess what this leads to: burn-out.
Over time, I’ve come to accept that I’m a lark, through and through. My energy is morning-loaded. After a certain point (usually about 6pm), I am done for the day. What this acceptance gives me is a more realistic attitude towards procrastination. Before, I’d kid myself that I could postpone task X or Y until the evening, and allow distractions to creep into my morning. Embracing my inner lark reminds me that the only thing I’m doing in the evening is recharging!
Would-Like-To-Do Lists
Finally, a bit of self-kindness is key to tackling goals without stress. As a friend of mine always says, don’t make to-do lists. Make would-like-to-do lists. These are things you’d love to see yourself mastering in the long-term, but not do-or-die obligations on yourself.
Think of them as a mood board for the future you – ideas for a new you, some of which will make it, and some of which will change over time. There’s no ‘must’ about self-development – it’s a network of roads and your route can change at any time.
The main thing is that you have an open positive, and explorative mindset!