As Gyms Empty, A Return Look at New Years Resolutions

I recently read a study about attendance at various gym brands in the new year. Though a little bit dated, the trend matched what I see at my local club - following a spate of newbies hitting the gym in January to fulfill some New Years resolutions, half of them have stopped going by the time Valentines day rolls around. And attendance continues to decline each week through the rest of the year.

At work, my sales teams conducted quarterly business reviews in the first week of January - and they made a variety of commitments and resolutions about things they wanted to do differently in 2020 to have even better performance. This month, we'll be revisiting those goals, and hopefully will see much more adherence to our business resolutions than most gym-goers.

As I prepare for those reviews, though, it reminded me of a speaker I heard years ago, who talked about making multiple New Years' resolutions - one to address each of eight "aspects of the self" that he walked us through. It's a talk that had a big impact on me, and I've worked to pursue eight categories of resolutions each year since. Here are the categories, and some examples of resolutions for each:

As I write a year's group of resolutions, I've also taken care to make each one a SMART goal, namely that they each are:

• Specific: They target a specific thing that can be defined with a great deal of precision.
• Measurable: They have a measure of success that can be quantified/a way to know when they've been accomplished
• Accountable: There is a specific person (in this case, me) who is accountable for doing them.
• Realistic: They focus on results that can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-bound: They have a specific date or timeframe for when the result(s) can be achieved.

After a few years of working through these resolutions, another colleague talked about seeing the various aspects of one's self like a flock of geese flying together. When they fly, one goose takes the lead, and the rest of the geese line up behind him, getting more lift and an easier flight by surfing on the wake of the lead goose.

Over time, the geese switch places - the lead goose moves to the back to rest a while honking encouragement to a different goose who takes over and directs the flock for a bit. In a similar way, there are times in our life when a professional goal may need to take priority while the rest move to the background, and others when a family or relationship goal is more pressing and needs to relegate the professional goal to a secondary position.

I've found that by being explicit about what all eight "geese" are trying to do this year - as well as clearly articulating which is the primary goose at the moment - I'm better able to tend to all of the facets of my self. And because they get revisited on a regular basis, each one gets attended to more frequently - so I'm more likely to succeed at all of them than if I had just named an arbitrary, one-off "lose weight this year" kind of resolution.

I'm curious about your experience with resolutions, however. Are there categorizes of resolution that aren't captured in this eight-facet view? Are there additional things that you do to make sure you have a high rate of success with your own goals? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. And if you appreciated this article, let me know by giving it a "Thumbs Up" and sharing it with your network.

About:  JD Miller is a senior technology executive with a career spanning small startups and large public companies. He uses this expertise to help organizations increase and sustain financial performance. He is also active in Chicago’s philanthropic community, with a special interest in issues related to hunger and homelessness.

You can follow Dr. Miller on Twitter @JDM_Chicago