5 Steps to Set Goals You Can Achieve This Year

Happy New Year from Our Team at KCC! We hope this new year brings incredible success in both your work and personal lives. It’s a joy every time we help our clients achieve their goals, and we can’t wait to see what wonderful journeys we’ll be part of this year. 5 Steps to Set Goals You Can Achieve This Year Whether or not you’re a fan of setting New Year’s resolutions, the beginning of the year is a perfect time to revisit your goals and evaluate your direction and your progress. Are you happy in your current role at work? Do you have health issues you’ve been meaning to address but keep putting off? Setting goals sometimes feels daunting, especially if the goal involves significant changes. Thankfully, you can take specific steps to make achieving those goals more manageable and more likely. Here are 5 ways to set goals you can accomplish this year. 1. Be Specific and Intentional. Making vague plans for positive life changes is easy, but those loose ideas can leave us without momentum. Specifics and a meaningful outcome provide a motivating finish line. Getting started is much easier when you connect your goals to your “WHY” and know exactly how far you need to go. It also makes the goal more real and more personal. Here are some examples. Vague: Lose weight. Specific: Lose ten pounds by June first to get my health back on track. Vague: Get promoted. Specific: Advance to a level three engineer by September to feel more fulfilled at work. 2. Break It Down and Habit Stack. One mistake we sometimes make when goal-setting is not breaking a goal down into small steps. These bite-sized steps make even the most challenging goals more manageable. Instead of holding the whole project in your head, you can focus on one step at a time. I use a technique called habit stacking. For example, for my goal of getting super fit in 2025, one action step I implemented was to do counter push-ups and tricep dips every morning while my coffee brews. Much easier, right? 3. Write It Down and Keep It Visible and Trackable. Have you heard the expression, “out of sight, out of mind”? Don’t let your goals fall into that trap. Keep them in sight. Post a reminder on your bathroom mirror. Write it on your calendar. Set a reminder to pop up on your phone when you are most likely to need it. I recently started using an app called Structured to organize and track my daily and weekly action steps, and I love it! In a study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University in California, she found that participants were 42% more likely to achieve goals committed to writing. 4. Keep It Positive. When it comes to achieving goals, your self-talk is essential. It can feel overwhelming or discouraging if you miss a milestone, experience a slip-up, or encounter a setback. However, multiple studies have shown that guilt isn’t [...]

By |2025-01-08T17:36:24-04:00January 8th, 2025|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Steps to Set Goals You Can Achieve This Year

3 Ways to Find Your Work-Life Balance This Year

3 Ways to Find Your Work-Life Balance This New Year Some of the most common New Year’s resolutions boil down to establishing a sustainable work-life balance. Whether you’ve set fitness, health, or financial goals, they become much more achievable when your lifestyle balances work and personal time. Work-life balance means something different to everyone. First, define what is important for YOU. Next, whatever resolutions you’ve set, we recommend that you make it a point to prioritize your work-life balance this new year. Here are three ways you can do that. 1. Be Realistic. Setting a goal to achieve a good work-life balance doesn’t mean getting it perfect. In fact, not only is a perfect work-life balance not ongoingly achievable but if you make perfection your criteria for success, the most significant thing you’ll most likely increase is your frustration. Instead, be realistic. How much flexibility do you have in your daily or weekly schedule? Does it make sense to work more hours on specific days so you can prioritize personal activities on different days? Health experts will tell you that having a healthy diet doesn’t mean you eat all the healthy foods daily. Instead, what you consume over a few weeks or a month creates a well-balanced diet. I personally love the 80/20 principle… I eat whole, organic, fresh food 80% of the time and “have fun foods” 20% of the time…The same applies to a work-life balance. Think of your time in terms of a week, two weeks, or a month, and look at where you’re out of balance in that timeframe. 2. Make Time to Unplug. At KCC, we love Anne Lamott’s quote: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” Set aside some time each week to put aside your phone and email. A morning, an hour, whatever suits your schedule. Give yourself a break from your screens and engage with your surroundings in other ways. If the weather is good, walk along a pretty street or in a lovely park. Enjoy time with your pet. People-watch at a coffee shop. Give your brain some time to slow down. Don’t be discouraged if this is harder than you expect. It can be disconcerting to discover how often we reach for our devices, even when we don’t need to. Set a timer and stick to your screen-free plans. Teaching your body to take a break will allow you to be more focused and energized when it’s time to work again. 3. Plan a Vacation. In my book 21 Days to Happiness, I mention how spending on experiences is usually more beneficial than spending on “things.” Why? Because there are 3 fun phases: phase 1 – planning; phase 2 – enjoying the experience; and phase 3 – remembering! So, now is the perfect time to start thinking about and planning a trip for later in the year. By doing the research now, you allow time to adjust your budget to have the [...]

By |2024-01-10T18:28:29-04:00January 10th, 2024|Happiness Tips|Comments Off on 3 Ways to Find Your Work-Life Balance This Year
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