It’s that time of year, again, when many set bold New Year’s Resolutions and most quickly let them fade away.  Old habits and the relentless pressures of life and work conspire against keeping them.

One of the problems with such annual resolutions is that while the days are many, the year is one big thing that looms large in front of us. If early steps are missed, it becomes easy to give up on the bigger goal. I can’t offer any magical solutions for this, but I can suggest taking it one step at a time.

Take a worthwhile New Year’s Resolution and turn it into a New Month, New Week and then a New Day Resolution. Looked at in this way, the prospect of achieving the ultimate goal doesn’t appear nearly as daunting. Let’s consider a simple example: You intend to read 6 books on professional improvement this coming year.  That’s only one book every two months, right?  This doesn’t seem like much of a challenge until two months have passed and you haven’t cracked one open yet, or things get busy and you’ve still not begun reading after four months.. From that point forward, trying to reach the original goal looks even steeper; at the six month mark, you might as well give up on that one and focus on something easier to achieve. Or….

Considering that an average book contains 300 pages, that would equate to reading 1800 pages in a year. But the reality is that the amount is only 150 pages per month, 35 per average week, and only 7 pages per day if you figure only reading 5 days per week. That’s right, much less than a chapter and only minutes per day will get you to the goal.  That easily fits with a cup of coffee in the morning, a few minutes in bed before turning out the light at night, or even easier with an audio book on the drive to or from work.

Here’s the point. If you deem it important, time can be set aside for it. The key is to focus on something worthwhile, not everything all at once. When taken in daily doses, the New Day Resolution enables significant accomplishments to be made incrementally over time.  As the saying goes, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” So, take that daily step and enjoy the journey!