A New Years resolution seems firm, final, absolute. A goal is a desired result, an aim, and it tells a story. A goal is a journey, whereas a resolution is a destination.

If you like the term “New Years goals” instead of “New Years resolutions,” we don’t take you any less seriously than if you were talking about resolutions. Goals are actually more realistic than resolutions because at the end of the day, it’s all about the little steps you make to get towards your ultimate achievement rather than making a jump right to it.

Setting new goals doesn’t have to only occur in January of a new year, but a new year is a natural time for reflection followed by a goal reset. So why not reset those goals? Here’s how to pick strong and attainable goals and stick to them.

Don’t Take On Too Many Goals

It’s hard to achieve all of your goals if you have too many and your time to work on each one is spread too thin. It’s hard to create concrete steps to achieve all of the goals if you’re overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. Instead, focus on a few goals you really want to accomplish and build a roadmap for each on how you’ll accomplish them.

Understand Your “Why”

It may seem obvious, but while you’re setting your goals, think about your intention. Why do you want to achieve each specific goal on your list? What will accomplishing this goal add to your life?

You boost your chance of success when the pluses of achievement outweigh the minuses and making this change in your life becomes more attractive than doing nothing about it all.

Keep It Specific

Instead of saying, “I want to do more cardio this year,” reframe this goal to “I want to do 30 minutes of cardio after three lifting sessions a week.” If you end up crushing this goal, you can add more cardio minutes onto your post-lifting routine, but setting a super specific starting point is key to making your goal more achievable.

Create Stepping Stones

You can’t immediately start doing 30 minutes of cardio if all you’ve ever been doing prior is zero. Start with 15 minutes of cardio once a week, increase the days you do it on gradually, and increase the time you do it until you’re eventually at your goal. It’s all about the baby steps.

Don’t Repeat the Past

If you haven’t succeeded with one goal in the past, it doesn’t make much sense to pick up that goal again—unless this time you have a different approach and manageable steps to get you there.

Make It Known

Say your 2024 goals out loud! Share with family, friends, training partners, and whoever else you trust. Even just writing them down will make them more real.

Get a Buddy

Pick someone in your life that will hold you accountable as you work towards your goals. For any training goals, it always helps to have a gym buddy, whether it’s one you find at the gym or a friend you bring along with you. If you set aside a time to work out every day with that buddy, you’re less likely to bail on the workout.

Download a Tracking App

We spend an average of 4 hours and 30 minutes on our phones per day, so if you’re already on your phone, why not use it to hold yourself accountable too?

Say you want to make sure you’re getting more protein in your diet. First of all, make that goal more specific: you want to increase your protein by 60 grams per day. Then, use an app to track how much protein you eat in each meal, and spread out your protein intake throughout the day by making sure you get 20 grams per meal.

And if you don’t get in 20 grams of protein per meal, make sure your snacks have protein in them (or drink a PWR LIFT for an easy extra 10 grams of protein) and track them in the app too.

Give Your Goal Time To Become a Habit

It takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Every person is different, but once you achieve your goal, you have to keep working at it so that it becomes a habit.

Say you want to become more of a morning person. Next, you know what we’re going to say at this point: make that goal more specific by saying you want to wake up an hour earlier than you normally do every day. Then, incrementally work on that goal.

Start waking up 10 minutes earlier every day for a week. Once you master 10 minutes earlier, add 10 more minutes, until you reach your goal of waking up an hour earlier every day. And when you get there, you have to keep it up every day for year so that it becomes engrained in you to wake up at that time.

No matter what your goals are, once they become a part of your routine, then you can set new goals to go after. And you don’t need to wait to 2025 do it.