Try this and accomplish your goals.

92% of us won’t accomplish our goals this year.

Since I was a kid I have been setting goals and learning that I am pretty bad at actually achieving them. Apparently, I am not alone. In 2013, Forbes discovered that only 8% of us achieve our New Year’s resolutions. And according to U.S. News, 80% of us have already given up on our goals by February. In other words, the vast majority of us don’t know how to accomplish our goals at all.

So how can we increase our odds of actually achieving our goals? It’s actually rather simple, stay focused on your daily routine. In the last few years, I have shifted my focus from annual goals to my daily goals and it has not only increased my happiness and sense of accomplishment, but I am actually achieving what I want overtime.

Here’s a simple routine that takes less than 5 minutes a day. Find an empty notebook and start each morning by doing the following:

1. Reflect on the previous day and write down 3–5 accomplishments that you feel proud of.
2. With the previous day in mind, write down 3–5 areas that you know you need to focus on more or things you wish you had gotten to accomplish the previous day.
3. Lastly, write down 3–5 goals that you have for today.

That’s it. Get your day started and revisit your notebook each morning repeating the steps above.

A simple routine that takes less than 5 minutes a day.

Try this for a few days and you will start to notice patterns of where you easily succeed and where you fall short. Celebrate the wins, because overtime the wins will become new habits and you will continue to drive focus on the goals that you tend to put off or perceive as hard.

I am a firm believer that self-accountability is a key ingredient to breaking through goal-setting failures. If you are already falling short on your New Year resolutions, I challenge you to give this 5 minute commitment a try. What do you have to lose? Most of us will fail anyway.

Thanks for reading! Have other thoughts or questions? Leave a comment.

If you found this article helpful, you should check out my previous post, Defining your zen-diagram, where I encourage readers to focus on defining their core pillars of happiness instead of setting general goals for the year.