Pushing The “Reset” Button: R&R For The New Year
The New Year is the most popular time for people trying to set new goals, create resolutions, and change their lives for the better. It provides a fresh start and sets a clear date for when to begin making changes to your lifestyle. Because of the hyperfocus on becoming better people during the new year, you often have plenty of company that shares the same vision as you do. However, that company isn’t known to last long.
Most people create resolutions during the new year that they end up losing focus or motivation on within a few months. This may be because they put far too much pressure on these big changes, expecting them to change their life immediately. Or maybe it's because they create massive goals and don’t give themselves enough time to accomplish them, leading to frustration and a lack of determination. Or it could be that many of the resolutions set around the new year are riding on the coattails of the hope that they will be able to completely reinvent themselves in the span of a second once the clock strikes twelve. This usually would rely on these people having an endless stream of motivation and an incredible skill to be productive 24/7. While this may be a goal to lead up to over time, it isn’t something that happens right away. And while you should set goals that challenge you and dream as big as you can imagine, it is important to be realistic in how you plan to achieve those goals and dreams so that you aren’t leading yourself directly down a path of frustration, burn out, becoming overwhelmed and ultimately giving up on the goals that were important to you. In the end, it isn’t that those people don’t care about their goals, it is simply that they are not setting themselves up correctly to achieve them.
When creating a plan for your new year, it is important to make your changes truly manageable and fun. While you might want to be more productive and take your goals seriously in the following year, you don’t want to spend your entire life stressing about getting things done. Keep your plans manageable and flexible so that you can still take time to enjoy hobbies, days off, and time with loved ones. This will help you reduce the risk of brun out and give you the opportunity to fill your year with memories. Keep in mind that the changes you make can be fun as well! Maybe you want to learn a new language or instrument in the following year? Instead of turning this into a chore, make it fun by creating challenges or games for yourself and turn it into something you’ll enjoy and look forward to every day. (For more information on how to set goals properly, purchase issue 01 for “Goal Setting For Geese Who Get Distracted By Shiny Things.”)
What is R&R? Usually, R&R stands for “Rest and Relaxation.” But in terms of creating a plan for the new year, we refer to it as “Review and Reset.” This is a strategy used for the new year (or whenever you feel the need for a good reset to life) to help you understand on a deeper level what you want your life to look like, and how to get there. In the R&R strategy, you take time to review what your life is now and how the past year has gone, and then look forward into what you’d like your life to look like and reset your goals and mindset into ones that will help you reach it. Creating an R&R plan makes it just a bit easier to work toward a life you will be happy with and proud of. With a plan, you will feel much more confident and capable of tackling the big changes you’d like to make.
The R&R doesn’t just have to be used in terms of improving your life. It could be used anywhere you deem fit. Maybe you feel that a good review and reset is needed for your home specifically? Or maybe a business or your work life? We’ve used R&Rs in the past to help develop goals as well as motivate the others around us to help achieve them! Looking ahead to what life could be is an exceptional method to help foster motivation and teamwork. An increase in productivity, even if only lasting for a few months, is the direct result of an excitement or drive to accomplish something you want!
When considering what aspects of your life you’d like to include in your R&R plan, be sure to look deeply into each one. It could be anything big from projects, your home, work, relationships, lifestyle, things you want to learn, to anything small like, minor goals, habits, putting down Christmas decorations, or lessening your screen time. Simply find the parts you could want to improve in (even a little bit) and add those to your plan.
Review is the first step of the R&R process. Looking back on how far you’ve come and analyzing where you are now can help you to understand how much difference a year can make or maybe how slow some progress moves forward. The amount of progress you made in the last year can help guide you toward a reasonable amount of change you’d like to make this year. Remember, it is all about keeping your goals challenging but still manageable. When reviewing parts of your life, take into account both the good and the bad. Understanding what you are doing right and what you could improve on is an easy way to help clarify what your goals should be and helps the mission of changing for the better seem a little less challenging.
The reset section consists of creating goals for where you want each part of your life to be by the end of the year as well as developing a plan to get there. Resetting is the most important part of the process because it helps you to reframe your entire life to fit the one you want to live. Think of it as pressing the giant “RESET” button on only the parts of your life you wish to improve. While the new year might be the most popular time to reset, it is important to remember that a true reset can begin at any time and will likely take much longer than people possible to achieve. So don’t fall into the same trap that others do! Make your reset realistic and manageable. Even small improvements are worth your time and energy. A year is a long time and a lot can change in 365 days. Sometimes, plans must change to fit what your new life has become so ensure to keep your plans somewhat flexible and be ready to change things if they aren’t working for you.
Using the Review & Reset method can completely change your year by providing a clear and functional plan to help you reach the life of your dreams. All you need to do is follow the plan and make it real. Keep in mind that some progress is slow. And while you may not be able to accomplish everything you set out to do in the year, making any effort to grow for the better is better than none. Focussed plans and goals are so much better than simply winging it and blindly hoping you succeed.
Another way to increase the impact of the R&R is to incorporate it somehow into something memorable by documenting it. In the past, we have used slideshows with each slide representing an aspect of our work we would like to improve on but you can also use a notebook, a spreadsheet, or even a journal. This makes it easy for you to refer back to later and throughout the year to remember what your goals and plans were. This serves as a consistent reminder and forces you to compare what you wanted at the beginning of the year to where you are at the moment. It makes the process of working through it more fun if the targets are somewhere other than just your mind. Documenting your progress and where you started can also give you something to look back on at the end of the year to see how much you’ve grown. Presenting your progress at the end of the year will also help you to find inspiration in how to continue growing next year.
In a year from now, you will be able to look back at your Review & Reset plan to see how you were then compared to the person you have become! Not to mention, assuming you have followed the R&R plans set for yourself you will have accomplished a number of wonderful goals and practically be an expert in setting them! The new year is a fantastic time to push the reset button… just make sure you are doing it right!
