New Year’s Resolutions get a bad rap. The argument against them says that if you need a New Year to set new goals for yourself, then you’re probably not serious about them. You should be able to make important changes to yourself at any time of the year.
Statistically however, this is not true.
Research has found that after six months of effort following New Year’s Resolutions, 46 per cent of people are still staying true to those goals.
In comparison, of those people with similar goals — say, weight loss — who did not make resolutions, only 4 per cent are still working on those goals at six months.
There is something about the ticking over of a New Year that can propel people to make change. It pays to take this opportunity.
A forty-six per cent success-rate however, still means that 54 per cent of the resolution population is falling away within six months of New Year’s Day. If this is you, it might be time to re-think the goals you set. It might be time bin the outcome goals, and set some behaviour goals instead.
Behaviour Goals vs Outcome Goals
So what’s the difference? Outcome goals have a specific, fixed target. They tend to be the measurable benefits of our behaviours. Behaviour goals place the focus on the action. You’re just aiming to do the thing, not aiming for the benefit of doing the thing.
The experts tell us that you have to ensure that your objectives — your resolutions — are SMART. That is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
For weight loss goals, you’d normally pick a target amount to lose, make sure you can measure it (maybe think skin folds, not just weight on the scales), make it achievable, make sure that the target is relevant to your overall objective (again, are we talking fat loss or weight on the scales) and then set a time-limit to work towards.
Behavioural goals are different. Behavioural goals — sometimes referred to as process goals — focus instead on what you need to do to achieve your outcome goals, and you make those things the focus instead.
So, to lose weight, to start with, I know I will need to hit the gym at least four times a week (there are other ways to do it, but the gym is obviously a good option). If I know I need to increase my fluid intake, rather than making a specific daily water intake the target, I’ll instead make the goal to bring my water bottle with me everywhere I go. And you can make nutritional goals in a similar way as well.
Instead of jumping on the scales at the end of the week and wondering why you haven’t lost as much weight as you could have, instead, you critique whether you hit your gym target, your water bottle target and your diet plan.
Why behaviour goals might be a better option
The first reason why behavioural goals might lead to more success long term is because we have much more control over the success or failure of these goals. If the goal is to hit the gym four times a week, turn up and you’ve hit your target.
What we do at the gym matters as well, and we can work training behaviours into those goals also. But turning up is obviously critical to success.
We tend to have less control over outcome goals, because there tends to be more variables at play that can impact success. Using weight-loss as an example, as we know, we can do everything right and still see progress stall or move incredibly slowly, due to metabolic issues, stress, sleep and so forth. This can have a negative impact on our desire to keep pursuing that goal, and continuing with the behaviours necessary to achieve that goal.
The second reason is, when you consider outcome goals, there is an end-point. You’ll either hit the target or abandon the mission. Either way, we are likely to cease the behaviours that we adopted in our mission at some point. Many common health goals, and even many other goals such as business and financial success and improvements to important relationships, require ongoing behavioural change. Therefore, it makes sense to make behaviour the focus.
We know that real success comes from long-term behaviour change and the formation of good habits. For real success in 2022, set your goals differently. Pin your goals on your behaviour, not on external outcomes. If you really want to lose weight, and more importantly, keep that weight off long term, then setting your New Year’s Resolutions around the specific behaviours needed to achieve that outcome could see you well on track six and 12 months down the road.
