Creating and keeping New Year’s Resolutions with Quarterly Goals

The clock ticks down to midnight. Second-by-second until the fireworks sound on the TV and in the distance.

2025 is here.

Inevitably, you gather round the table, or on the sofas, or on some scenic balcony in Europe. You soak up the views of your kitchen, or the living room, or of the Eiffel Tower at night, and discuss with your closest friends or family the contents of your dreams for the next year.

Desperately, you try to figure out your vision, a path for Future You, which will form and come into fruition with a deadline of exactly one year. You’ll reconvene in that exact spot to assess how everyone fared with their New Year’s Resolutions.

If you’re anything like me, things won’t have gone so well.

Every year I’ve settled on the same goals, and every year has ended in the same way. Some progress, a little bit better – but not quite where I want to be. To me, personal improvement and changing for the better is really important. We only get one chance at life and, if you’re in a good enough position to be able to enact some positive change, why wouldn’t you? If you can do something better for yourself – or to change your priorities to focus on improving the lives of others, you’d be silly not to.

I’ve read through all of the books about productivity and disproved the myth of motivation, but every year has gone the same way.

Why is that?

The problem that I’ve had is that I’ve set out a vision for where I want to be in a year, but not where I want to be in 6 months, in a month – even by next week. Here’s how you can stick to your New Year’s Resolutions with quarterly goals, and how I’m using them to fine-tune my own goal-setting system.

If you missed the first part in this series, click here to read about how to transform 2025 to be the best year of your life.

The importance of Quarterly Goals

Resolutions are set so haphazardly that I doubt the majority of them will ever stick. In fact, only about 8% of us will actually stick to those lofty goals set when spirits are high. The trouble is, when we decide what we’d like to better for the following year, our goals tend to be hard to measure.

You’ll hear things like ‘I want to go to the gym more’ or ‘I want to learn Spanish’. How are you going to measure this? How are you going to prove to yourself that you’ve accomplished this? Whenever we do research or try to make progress towards meeting deadlines at work, there’s always criterion to show that we’re done. Whether that’s by tracking student voice to show whether our kids think that they’ve made progress, or by comparing data to before and after an intervention.

If you’re expected to do that in your job, why wouldn’t you use a similar system for improving your personal life? Set yourself deadlines to meet, whether it’s doing something every day, every week or twice a month – and track that on some form of a habit tracker. You might like to use a spreadsheet, a Bullet Journal, or even a digitised second brain.

Then, you’re going to make time for regular check-ins with yourself. Slot this into your Google Calendar to happen once a quarter – or once every four months – and take just ten minutes to assess your progress so far. If something hasn’t been working, figure out what’s gone wrong, why, and make a change to ensure that you’re more likely to stick to your goals for the next four months.

Then, check in. Do this four times a year to give yourself the greatest chance of getting 2025 right.

How to create effective resolutions

I’m not sure how many goals people tend to set each year – whether it’s just the one, or much more – but I always like to go for three. Three feels ambitious but manageable, and never overwhelming; the last thing that you want is to be put off by just how much you want to change.

So, here’s what you’re going to do: think of three facets of your life that you would like to see a positive change in. For me, that’s:

Health

Creativity

Learning

I’m not breaking the wheel: those are three overarching areas of my life that I want to improve upon, and have wanted to improve upon since 2019. While I’ve done well in some areas, I’ve fallen down in others. Let’s take it one at a time.

Health: I’ve been going to the gym more consistently, and bouldering twice a week. I’ve started to eat better – and more of it – to help me to achieve my weight goals. But I’m not massively interested in calorie counting or macro-maxing, even if it will help me to get closer to meeting my own goals. So, what am I changing

Overall goal: Increase muscle mass, food consumed daily, and move my body at least four times a week.

Creativity: Towards the end of last year, I tried out digital drawing for the first time ever. I downloaded Sketchbook, took out my stylus, and started drawing. I used to do this all the time, but really fell off when I went to University ten years ago. I’ve recently picked up a one-drawing-a-day book and am really excited to stick to this habit every day. However, I’d really love to make this novel of mine finally happen, which means committing to more writing. Five hundred words a day hasn’t seemed to work out, so let’s opt for one thousand-per-day instead.

Overall goal: One drawing a day and 1,000 words on my novel per week.

Learning: This one’s simple – I want to learn more. That means reading more, and keeping track of the books that I read. I did a pretty good job of this last year and got through 19 incredible books, and you can read my reviews of them here. However, I’m aiming even higher this year: 25 books (track my progress on GoodReads!). I think this is pretty important since a good writer is probably also a prolific read, meaning that I need to continue to read widely to improve my own writing prowess.

Overall goal: Read 25 books this year.

Using Quarterly Goals with my own New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve set some lofty goals. Lofty goals need supportive systems to ensure that they get done – and that’s where the idea of Quarterly Goals come in. Take out your phones or your tablets and schedule in a ten minute slot where you reassess the progress that you’ve made and make any changes to improve how much progress that you’re making.

Here’s how I’m going to keep track of my goals.

Health: Use the Strong app in conjunction with Samsung Health to remember how much working out I’ve done in a given week. I’ll keep a record of my meal plans on a huge whiteboard in my living room, so that I know which healthy, hearty meals I’m going to eat and when.

Creativity: A simple spreadsheet to keep track of how many words I’ve written during each week. I’ll include my overall word target (1,000 * 52 = 52,000 words in a year) to see whether I’ve exceeded my target – and when. I’ll also use my Bullet Journal to tick off whenever I’ve written or completed a 5-to-10-minute drawing.

Learning: Use GoodReads to keep on top of what I’m reading and when, as well as my brief thoughts on each book so that I don’t forget the key bits and bobs that I’ve learned. GoodReads is great for letting you know how many books you need to read per month to meet your goals, too, which will help me to stay on top of the texts I’m reading. I’ll also use a Bullet Journal for the daily reminders to read for at least half an hour before going to bed.

Then, every four months, I’ll check-in with my notations and assess whether I’ve achieved my goals and where my gaps are. I’ll assess whether anything got in the way of these facets and whether I can do anything to improve my likelihood of success.

Have you made any goals? How are you keeping on track of them and ensuring that you stick to them? I’d love to know so that we can stay accountable by you letting me know in the comments below.

If you liked that, you’ll love…

While you’re here, why not follow my socials?

Hardly Hamilton

Optimise your day with productivity tips, lifestyle hacks and lifelong learning