A New Year Resolution or a New Year System?

We are now midway through January and one of the most common questions asked at this time of year is “What are your new years resolutions?” 

According to the website Statista the Top 5 most popular resolutions for the UK population this year were “To eat healthier, to save more money, to exercise more, to spend more time with friends and coming in at number five to improve my performance in my job.” 

But by February most resolutions have not been followed and the goal not achieved!

But this may not be a bad thing as research shows that you will be unhappy for the majority of time on your journey to a goal and even if you achieve it happiness will soon disappear.  This has been shown to be the case even in the case of Olympic Athletes, training a life time to win a gold medal who are not happy when they achieve it.  Ironically Silver medal winners are believed to happier by not achieving their goal.  

The same is true for entrepreneurs who successfully grow and sell their business.

I think, author Scott Adams in his book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big", sums it up well “To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal, if you reach it at all, feeling as if you are short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realise you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction.”

Instead, I think we should be focusing on developing our New Year Systems rather than goals.

James Clear in his book “Atomic Habits” has a phrase I really like “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

Sam Carpenter’s book “Work the System” delves deeply into this concept which I regularly recommend to business leaders.  Whilst the book focused on developing and improving systems in every part of the business, the same concept applies for our personal lives.

So if you want to achieve something, whatever it may be the key is to work on the system, and the outcome will then take care of itself.

To conclude, none of the Top 5 resolutions above are S.M.A.R.T goals or defined system improvements but if a system was developed to help you for example save more money, eat healthier or improve performance in your job, I think it is highly likely that this will develop more successful outcomes and your journey of continuous improvement.

Please do write in the comments below any personal systems that you have developed or indeed if you are the minority and you have consistently kept your new year resolutions!

Have a good day.

Harvard Professor Arthur C. Brooks emphasises that happiness isn't a destination but a direction, found in daily progress, purpose, and meaningful relationships, not just chasing external goals (money, power, fame) which lead to what he calls the "hedonic treadmill" where you never arrive. He advocates for embracing "wanting less," focusing on serving others, building strong bonds (family, friends), finding satisfaction in work, and cultivating inner life through practices like early mornings (Brahma Muhurta), rather than accumulating more achievements. 

Patrick O’Shaunessy, host of Podcast Invest Like the Best wrote an interesting essay Growth without goals  about what he calls continuous goals, which focus on incremental improvement rather than shiny achievements. Many goals we may have in life do not come with a neat checkbox that you can check once it’s done. What really matters is to keep on levelling up.

Carpenter himself discovered the power of systems after experiencing near-total burnout while managing his business. Faced with unsustainable stress and long work hours, Carpenter realised that his company’s processes were haphazard and inefficient, leaving him constantly putting out fires. His business, and life, was in crisis mode, which is a familiar feeling for many entrepreneurs and leaders.

The central thesis of Work the System is that a business can only function smoothly when its systems are identified, analysed, and improved. Carpenter emphasises that nearly every business operation can be broken down into smaller, manageable processes. Once these processes are identified, they can be documented, optimised, and standardised. The goal is to create a self-sustaining system that works independently, freeing up the leader to focus on higher-level tasks.

This quote is great – “Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements, but those things are just byproducts.”

https://www.weh.ox.ac.uk/news/faster-higher-stronger-happier-olympic-athletes-and-the-philosophy-of-well-being#:~:text=It%20seems%20a%20bit%20puzzling,living%20their%20best%20possible%20lives.