How to Set Goals That Stick
New Year’s resolutions often fizzle out, but by adopting the SMART method, you can better ensure that you pursue them to the finish.
You know the drill—you set a bunch of resolutions at the beginning of the year, hoping they’ll contribute to positive changes in your life and business, and then, within months, you’ve dropped them. And you’re not alone. According to U.S. News & World Report, 80 percent of people stop working on their resolutions as early as mid-February. But you can see yours to fruition with the help of insights from the field of psychology. Follow these tips for setting obtainable goals and creating new habits, and you may see enormous benefits for both your company and your professional life.

Why they matter
One reason why establishing goals is so important is that there’s a direct correlation between doing so and achieving them; research shows that those who persistently set actionable goals for themselves are more likely to experience better results and performance. Striving for your ambitions can also help you feel happier and give you a sense of purpose. And as author and motivational speaker Mel Robbins notes, having goals can make your work and life more manageable by helping you realize that a fix is possible for any challenges you may be facing and that there may be an avenue to pursue your grandest ambitions.
Obstacles to attaining them
Reaching your goals can be difficult because they often demand effort and a change in habits and behavior. Our brains are constantly weighing risks and rewards, making us instinctively shy away from things like complex tasks. To overcome these mental roadblocks, you must lay out a clear road map outlining your path to success and develop a strong sense of discipline. After all, anything worth achieving requires at least some hard work.
Make your goals SMART
One often used technique for setting and achieving goals is the SMART framework, which focuses on making them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This system can turn an objective that might otherwise seem like a fuzzy wish into a concrete target you can devise simple and realistic steps for obtaining.

Specific
You can make a goal seem less daunting by clearly specifying the who, what, where, when, and why related to it, including how to obtain it. For example, if you want to improve your company’s online presence in 2025, you could narrow your parameters, such as by aiming to boost your website traffic by 20 percent, and then identify which team members to assign that task to. Be sure to note the relevant details in a document you and your team can refer to—several studies have shown that doing so can go a long way to helping ensure your success.
Measurable
Establishing ways to quantify your progress is equally essential when setting a goal. Continuing the example of boosting your website’s traffic, you can utilize Google Analytics to track how many people visit your site daily, weekly, and monthly to gauge whether you’re on pace for your end target. Without such measurable benchmarks, it would be challenging to determine how far you’ve come and how much further you must go to reach your goal. Collecting facts and figures throughout the process can also help motivate you and your team as you work toward your goal since it can make what you’ve accomplished more concrete and clearly reveal the path left ahead.
Achievable
It’s good to be ambitious in business, but there’s a fine line between challenging yourself and your team and being unrealistic in what you can achieve. So while you should always aim to set stretch goals, also make sure they’re reasonably achievable considering your available timeline and other resources like technology and your team’s skills. Review what you or your company was able to accomplish in the previous year, and conduct research into current and upcoming trends in your industry. Then come up with objectives that go one or two steps further than what you’ve achieved in the past, pushing the envelope enough to reach new heights but not past the point of unattainability.
Relevant
The most appropriate goals are ones that can have a meaningful impact on your business or career, aligning with either your professional ambitions or your company’s mission, strategic objectives, or bottom line. Consider looking at your company’s mission and vision before selecting new businessrelated goals to ensure that they’re aligned with those statements. Setting goals that tie into your company’s overall mission can help to foster greater motivation among your team members since they’ll likely be able to understand how they can contribute to achieving them individually and as a team.
Time-bound
Every goal needs a set deadline because without one, it’s all too easy to lose focus and procrastinate. Establish end dates for your objectives, breaking larger ones into smaller components and designating a period for when each must be completed. Consider again the aim of increasing your web traffic by 20 percent. You could perhaps first specify a deadline for optimizing your content with keywords, another for creating targeted landing pages, and a third for working on your social media strategy. Setting deadlines for each step can ensure that you stay on track and avoid any last-minute scrambling.
No one’s perfect at keeping resolutions, but if you follow the SMART framework for yours, you might find it less difficult to work toward them. By integrating these five components, you can outline what you need for success and be better able to hold your feet to the fire and see your decisions through.
TAKE ACTION:
Identify your main goals for the year, and use the SMART method to make them more quantifiable and actionable.