Everyone sets New Year’s goals (resolutions is the official term, I think) but nobody seems to follow through with them.
That’s because the majority of these resolutions are dreams, not goals, or they’re too complicated to follow through on. If you want to accomplish something, you need to make it practical and achievable.
With this in mind, here are a few useful guidelines for having the best 2019 possible.
The Only Money Tip You Need
(Little Known Investment Fact: Stocks And Real Estate Historically Outperform Shoes And Rental Cars)
Do you actually want to own something, or do you want the rush of showing off?
If you’re just buying status, look for beneficial alternatives to your typical consumer goods.
Could you mortgage a rental property for what it costs to rent a condo?
Is there somewhere you’d like to vacation instead of buying designer clothes?
Would you investing provide the same thrill as leasing a car?
Buying assets and experiences provides more fun, for a longer duration of time, than most emotional or status based purchases.
If you don’t have the money for either of these, start a web business or get a part-time job. Put the extra cash in a high yield savings account.
The Best Technique For Improving Your Intelligence
Getting smarter is a common New Year’s goal.
Many people fall back on expensive supplements or nootropics, expecting them to do all the work. Doing this is like drinking protein shakes without exercising and then wondering why you’re not in shape.
Here are several more effective techniques:
- Buy a Rubik’s Cube, learn to solve it.
- Get a puzzle book, solve one activity each morning.
- Play Backgammon, Chess, Bridge, or Poker for 30 minutes a day.
Any of these will sharpen your mind considerably.
How To Become More Interesting
(Easy Activity: Learn To Order Food In Another Language)
Try-hards rely on name dropping or place dropping for attention. It’s dull and screams “I’m the least important character in my own life story.”
When you’re interesting, people want to hear about you and what you’re doing.
The doesn’t mean dominating conversations or being self-absorbed. It means having one or two good stories worth sharing.
The easiest way to do this is to just try new things. Start painting, take a SCUBA certification class, do some travel, build a ship in a bottle, learn to program.
You can easily do something interesting or memorable in the time it takes to watch a Netflix series or beat a video game.
How To Become More Adventurous
If you’re over 18 you should have a passport and use it.
Most countries are surprisingly nice and fairly inexpensive. Even as a teenager, I never spent more than $2,000 for an entire trip.
And that included staying in hotels and airfare.
Between Airbnb, Uber, and 10 million other convenience apps, traveling has never been easier.
Make “visiting another country” one of your New Year’s goals.
The Best Mental Health Trick
Make your bedroom technology free. No computer, no TV, no smart phones. Don’t even keep them in the same room.
Get some classic literature (I’m enjoying Don Quixote) and read for an hour before bed.
Bonus: Invest in a gravity blanket. You’ll sleep a lot better.
The Best Physical Health Trick
Buy a power tower and put it near a doorway. Do some dips, pull-ups, and leg raises whenever you walk past or have some free time.
The device is also great if you live in a cold weather climate or have a hectic work schedule. You’re always able to do some bodyweight exercises, even if you don’t have time to hit the gym.
How To Follow Through New Year’s Goals
Most of your accomplishments are the result of tiny actions compounded over time.
This means consistent effort beats a high energy surge of activity. Work out for 30 minutes a day, and you’ve made more progress than someone who started – and abandoned – an ultra intense bodybuilder regime.
Write down your New Year’s goals, and then put them someplace easy to see (bathroom mirrors are great). This way you get a continuous reminder of what you need to do.
Likewise, I’d suggest not doing anything too crazy or setting impossibly huge milestones.
Finally, see if you can’t combine goals. Over the summer, I wanted to improve a revenue stream and raise my monthly investment contributions by $900 per month.
I put both goals together, wrote them down on a sheet of paper, then recorded every new sale made.
Within six weeks I hit my target.
Keep your objectives simple, measurable, and doable.