January 2, 2020

3 Tips & Planners to Kick-Off Your Best Year

A new year is a fresh start filled with hopes and dreams. It is a new chance to fulfill your potential and become the amazing person you were meant to be!

We make resolutions to lose weight, eat healthier, spend less money, and call our moms more–all with great intentions. The first week of January the gyms are packed, we’ve packed salads for lunch, and mom gets a sweet call. But by the middle of February the gyms are empty again, that taco place across from the office is calling our name and we’ll call mom next week.

Why does this happen?

We have great intentions but without a solid plan, we set ourselves up to fail. Here are my tips for sticking to your New Year’s Resolutions:

Make a Plan with a SMART Goal
Stick to the Minimums
Find a Buddy

Let’s dive in. Shall we?

1. Make a Plan with a SMART Goal

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of the Little Prince wrote “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” If you want your New Year’s Resolutions to be more than a wish, you need a good plan.

Start with a more defined goal. In the business world we talk about SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. Setting a vague goal like eat healthier leaves a lot of wiggle room which increases the likelihood of failing.

Eat Healthier

Instead of “eat healthier”, state your goal like a plan. “I will eat at least five different vegetables every day.” This goal is specific (eat vegetables), measurable (specifically five of them), attainable (spread across three meals this is doable), relevant (the “wish” is to eat healthier), and time-based (every day).

After you have a SMART goal, figure out a plan.

For breakfast every day except for Friday I eat the same thing. I have a bowl of sauteed baby kale and king oyster mushrooms with roasted red onions and hot sauce. On the weekends I add a fried egg and maybe some French bread. In the first meal of the day I’ve already checked off three vegetables and, of course, the meal is plastic-free!

I use my mesh produce bags get the baby kale from the farmer’s market, the king oyster mushrooms and onions loose in the produce section of my grocery store. (More details in a Simple Guide to Plastic-Free Grocery Shopping).

Olivia for the Ocean - Plastic-Free Living

After I’ve purchased the three items for my daily breakfast, I make a big batch of the vegetables on the weekends. Each morning I portion out a serving and bring it with me to work.

By having a SMART Goal and a detailed plan, you set yourself up for success by making it automatic. The more you have to think about something or figure out details on the fly, the less likely you will success at your goal.

Spend Less

As I talked about in “How Plastic-Free Living Helps You Stick to a New Year’s Resolution“, save more or spend less was one of the top 10 resolutions for 2019. Similar to my trash audits, if you don’t know where the current problems are you won’t be able to solve them.

Start by tracking your spending. Do you know how much you spend each month and on what? For every item that’s not a defined bill like rent/mortgage or electricity, enter the purchase into a spreadsheet. I like to do this manually instead of using an app like Mint because it’s easier to sort and organize the data myself and the added pain of entering the purchase into the spreadsheet deters extra purchases. In tracking your spending maybe you’ll see that you spend way more money than expected on lunch.

With that data collected you can set a SMART goal. Instead of “spend less”, your goal can be “pack lunch for work three days a week”. If you want to get even more detailed, you can specify the days. So, on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays you will pack a lunch.

From there figure out what your go-to packed lunches will be. Will you meal-prep a week’s worth of salad and box them up so they’re ready to go? In my first job ten years ago, I used to grab all the ingredients for my weekly salad and store it in the fridge at work.

Will they be leftovers from dinner? For four days of the week, I pack last night’s leftovers for the next day’s lunch for my husband and I.

Set yourself up for success by having a SMART Goal and a plan to make it happen.

2. Stick to the Minimums

Goals are hard and since we’re not robots, we need a little slack from time to time. Build in some slack to your plan by setting a minimum. If you accomplish that minimum, the small win gives you momentum for the next one.

Exercise More

If exercising more (or period) is your goal, the minimum can be as low as ten minutes on the treadmill two days a week. The idea is you want to make the bar so low that it’s laughable to say no. Because, really, who doesn’t have ten minutes they can run on a treadmill or outside? By accomplishing the minimum you’ve freed yourself from guilt and those small wins build momentum for larger wins.

After a few weeks of meeting the minimum you start thinking…it’s not that hard, I can easily squeeze in 20 minutes for two days a week or maybe an extra day. The point is you want to start building some positive momentum and those first quick wins will be the boost you need to develop a new habit.

Like I mentioned in the last post, I HATE running. But after failing to lose the last ten pounds of baby weight, I set a goal to run at least a mile at least three days a week. A light-paced mile for me was 10 minutes. I could spare 10 minutes a few days a week.

At first it was a chore. But I set the minimum and after each run, I got that small win. Then after a few weeks, it wasn’t so bad. It got me outside and gave me time to think about things away from all the digital screens.

After six months, I run at least four days a week and average two miles per run. This year, I’m thinking of running at least a mile every day. I ran two miles yesterday so I’m already off to a good start! This would have never happened if I didn’t give myself the baby steps of a minimum goal.

Use Less Plastic

I know that plastic-free living can feel overwhelming. These days it seems like everything comes in plastic. But consider sticking to one thing this year.

I’ve mentioned many times that 8 of the top 10 items collected at beach cleanups are plastics related to food and beverage packaging.

For 2020 how about setting a minimum of always bringing your reusable grocery bag? Plan to keep grocery bags in your car and if you forget while you’re in the store, then commit to walking back to your car, or just using the cart to bring all your items back to your car.

Or how about, setting a minimum to no longer purchase plastic beverage bottles? By giving up soda or other bottled beverages and sticking to water you can be healthier and save money! Plus, did you know that when even bottled from the same source, water in plastic water bottles have 7 times the amount of microplastics compared to tap water?

3. Find a Buddy

Like most difficult things, if you have someone to hold you accountable and to experience it with, you will be much more likely to succeed.

It’s also helpful if the buddy is “pulling you up”. They say you want to train with people who are better than you so they can push you to the next level. I started running with my co-worker who was training for a marathon. We mostly did two mile runs but every other week she would have a three- or four-mile run. Before running with her I couldn’t imagine running four miles voluntarily. But now, a four-mile run isn’t too bad since we’re passing the time by chatting.

So, find a buddy who can motivate you to push your limits.

What If I Don’t Have A Goal?

In 2018, I felt particularly lost. Instead of a goal I had a theme for the year, which was “self-investment”. I basically said “yes” to anything and everything that felt like it aligned with my values. I challenged myself to read a book a week and ended up reading 68. I took vacation days and paid out of pocket to go to conferences about protecting the ocean. I even pursued a straw ban in the city I lived in and got the city council to agree to put a “single-use disposables” ban on their 2019 -2020 work plan.

In saying yes to everything in 2018 and investing in myself, I found my direction and purpose. Which led me to my theme for 2019, “plastic”. Last year, I lobbied for plastic reduction bills in both Sacramento and Washington, DC. I gave a talk about plastic-free living to 300+ people at Workday Headquarters. I spoke on a panel about ocean microplastics with Ben Lecomte and Kathryn Kellogg. I’ve helped write plastic reduction ordinances for the city of San Francisco. I was a guest on the Surfrider California podcast and featured as a Spotlight Activist on Surfrider’s national website. And most importantly, I started this blog!

My point is, if you don’t have a goal then think of a theme and then set a minimum for your theme. Do one thing each month that fits your theme and invite a buddy along with you!

I’m currently reading “Finding My Badass Self” in which Sherry, a fifty-year old divorcee sets a goal to experience one new thing each week. She calls it her 52/52 project. If you don’t have a goal or direction, set a goal to explore!

Planners

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a type-A person. And being so, I LOVE organization. Planners are a great way to help organize your thoughts and track your progress. You can always go digital but something about putting pen on paper makes it seem more real. Don’t you think?

SELF Journal

I received a free PDF version of the SELF journal last year and decided to test it out. It has great prompts for goals and actions and sections where you can track habits.

Passion Planner

The Passion Planner was recommended to me by a co-worker who raves about it. I like that it has a little box to note the good things that have happened. In tackling goals it’s important to stay positive!