If, like most people, you made a New Year’s resolution – and you are reading this more than three weeks into the new year – you have most probably already messed up or even failed at your resolution. Regardless of what your resolution is or was, I’m sure you thought it through carefully, and prepared. Maybe your preparations included joining the gym, getting new exercise clothes, or maybe downloading an app. And yet, it is still most likely that you will fail (as will most people) much like you did last year and the year before.
New Year’s resolutions are like any project, and should be treated as such, at least if you want them to succeed.
Start with the end in mind – but be SMART
The most cited resolutions are generally health-related, something like wanting to lose weight, running a marathon, or bench pressing more. And knowing what you want to achieve is a good start but, if you want to improve your chances for success, the goal should be SMART.
SMART is an acronym and stands for Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound. Looking at these goals, they are all simple enough to be understood, and all are measurable. But they could all be improved by being a little more specific. This can be done by adding a number to them, for instance: lose 5 kg, run a marathon in a specific time, or bench press 80 kg.
Now we have goals that are specific, simple, and measurable. Next, we need to ensure that they are realistic and achievable. Loosing 5 kg and bench pressing 80kg is realistic and achievable for most people but wanting to run a marathon in under 2 hours is not realistic, as the world record is just over 2 hours (unless your goal is to smash the world record). If you currently do the occasional Park Run, and maybe a 10km Fun Run every now and then, doing a sub-2-hour marathon is neither realistic nor achievable. A more realistic goal is to aim for finishing the marathon in under 5 hours.
The final step is to make it timebound. Generally this means achieving your goal by the end of the year. By entering a marathon now, say for October, we have a definite deadline. So, our SMART goal is: run a marathon in October in under 5 hours.
If you want to learn more about SMART goals, read this article.
Plan
It doesn’t matter how amazing and SMART your goal is, if you don’t have a plan for how to achieve it, it is going to fail. As the saying goes: failure to plan is a plan to fail.
The more detailed your plan, the better. Let’s return to our marathon example: you need to work towards running between 40 and 80 km a week in the months leading up to October. This means planning your weekly runs, to ensure you do long sessions, some speed work, and the ever-dreadful hills training. Then schedule your runs in your diary. As a bonus, and to really set yourself up for success, plan the route for each run as well.
While planning your project…I mean resolution…you also need to include what other activities or resources you might need to employ. For more information on planning, read this article.
When things go wrong
Even if you have all the above in place, you will still most likely fail, because of this one thing: not having a contingency plan in place for when things go wrong.
Life happens, so what are you going to do if you have a work trip to a city you do not know? Are you just not going to train that week? What if you need to be there for three or four days a week, for months on end?
What about running in winter? And when you get ill or are injured?
Doing a risk analysis before something happens is the best way to prepare for when things inevitably do go wrong.
Knowing what is most likely to trip you up and having a plan in place is the best way to stick to your resolution. So, for your work trips, perhaps you can make sure your hotel has a gym, or maybe you can research the surrounding suburbs for a nice B&B in a run-friendly neighbourhood, or look for running clubs in the area.
If you know you tend to get sick when the kids go back to school after a holiday, then ensure you take that into account in your plan (all while trying your best not to get sick).
Tracking progress
Finally, you need to track your progress against your plan. Are you running the distances you were hoping to? Are you doing the speeds you want to? Perhaps part of your training plan was to do some preliminary races to track your progress, say a monthly 10km race, and a half-marathon in June. These are the ideal way to track your progress.
Tracking your progress is important, so you can adjust your plans accordingly. Let’s say you notice your times at the 10km races are getting better, but you are not hitting your weekly distance goals. This means it is time to focus more on your distance runs, and less on speed work. Maybe add in an extra half-marathon race instead of doing another 10 km race.
In conclusion, if you have made a New Year’s resolution, perhaps revisit it and make sure the goal is SMART, you have a detailed plan in place, and have spent time analysing and mitigating all the risks that may derail your plan. Finally, keep track of your progress!