Why Mid-Year Resolutions Don't Work

This turbulent year has left many of us feeling increasingly behind with the goals we originally set at the start of 2020. It has left us with personal and business goals that we've been unable to execute due to COVID-19.

So maybe like me, you might have found yourself planning "mid-year" resolutions or buying mid-year planners in an attempt to do-over 2020.

However, it isn’t that simple—and just like with New Year's resolutions, your mid-year resolutions may not go to plan either. Here are three main reasons why:

1. You don’t value them enough. Often value is what drives a resolution become a tangible goal, and so you must value a resolution enough to activate it.
2. You’re too focused on the outcomes. Rather than setting milestones, you focus on the end results, which may be so far away that you lose motivation as time goes on.
3. You set big audacious goals that aren’t realistic. Not many have the mindset to carry goals of that weight, and you won’t know if you can until it’s too late. By then, you’ve introduced an idea of expectation and failure which doesn't feel good.

Mid-Year Goal Planning

Source: Photo by Stil at unsplash

So what do should I do instead?

The CEO Review is a self-efficacy strategy that I use with coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs that I found works very well because unlike resolutions the focus in on the leader of the company and not on the goal itself.

Self-efficacy refers to an "individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments." (Bandura, 1994).

At the end of the day, you, as the CEO of your business, are more important than the goal. The goal is simply a by-product of you and your capacity to start and complete projects. So, focusing on what you want and why you want it is much more productive than focusing on the goal itself.

With you as the focus, a CEO review examines the things that worked for you in the first half of the year, the things that did not work, and the things that you didn’t consider. It allows you to ask questions like:

• How do I make sure that I can complete the challenges ahead?
• What productivity blocks might I face?
• What obstacles can I expect to come up against?

A CEO review allows you to develop your resilience and foresight and then to transfer that key learning into your businesses’ processes and systems.

Planning and working in a post COVID-19 setting

Source: Photo by airfocus on Unsplash

When do I perform a CEO review?

When I work with entrepreneurs to provide them with professional accountability, they have found this structure useful:

• Take 30 minutes weekly to focus on current priorities
• Take 1 hour when you’re halfway through a big project to review it
• Take ½ a day with your team on a quarterly basis to review the whole business

It may also be worth doing a CEO review when you feel particularly overwhelmed, as it may allow you the space to think through it, pinpoint the source of overwhelm, and find suitable solutions for you and your business.

How do I perform a CEO review?

Carve out some protected time in your schedule, gather all your data (and favorite stationery!) and follow these three simple steps:

1. Zoom out. Take a bird’s eye view of your whole project. Make sure that you’re familiar with all components, tasks, and timelines. However, ensure to keep your focus on your own responsibilities unless the situation calls for otherwise.
2. Zoom in. Look at details, get a good understanding of what hasn’t worked, and why. Make sure that you look at the energy blocks you mapped out previously and compare it to the productivity blocks that derailed you.
3. Close the gap. Identify your issue and close the gap between what’s outstanding in your plan and your current timeline, making sure to adjust both to suit the issues that you’ve uncovered.

Whilst it might feel painful to look backward to focus on what didn’t work for us, especially if we think we could’ve done better, it is important to be able to do this if we want to thrive going forward.

So I'm massively cheering you on to your success as you go ahead and smash those quarter three and four goals!