I don’t advise to stop planning goals or have no dreams. What doesn’t make much sense for me is setting them at the end of the year. I don’t want to wait with my dream to New Year Eve.

What you write about your goals is very interesting. This basically mean you underestimate time and/or effort needed to achieve your goals.

Anyway – making a kind of WBS for every resolution ant tracking them on a regular basis definitely raise chances to be successful, but you’re the first person I know who tracks it so carefully.

What I find interesting is if I look at my goals on a yearly basis, it is usually a big fat failure because I only achieve anywhere from 0% to 33%. However, if I look back at my goals over the years, as of today, it is as high as 88% for my 2006 goals.

Goals achieved at the end of each year

2003 6/24 = 25%
2004 7/19 = 37%
2005 6/21 = 29%
2006 5/17 = 29%
2007 7/21 = 33%
2008 0/17 = 0%
2009 0/13 = 0%

Original goals achieved as of today

2003 18/24 = 75%
2004 16/19 = 84%
2005 16/21 = 76%
2006 15/17 = 88%
2007 10/21 = 48%
2008 5/17 = 29%
2009 0/13 = 0%

If I did not set these “New Year Resolutions”, I’ll have no way of measuring my progress and improving my success rate. As a side note, some of my goals were huge undertakings such as earning a PhD, publishing three books, passing several industry certification exams, learning to scuba dive with my sons, going skydiving, visiting several countries, improving my house and so on. So, I think it is important that we set our yearly goals so that we can measure our progress and improve our success rate.

Based on the data above, I now know to divide my goals into manageable tasks (similar to a WBS) that can be accomplished within a year. Otherwise, my annual results will always be disappointing and discouraging. So, instead of saying “learn to speak French” (which can take several years), I’ll put down “enroll in a French course”, “run six 5K races” vs. “lose weight”, and “pay off one credit card” vs. “eliminate debt”. I also learned that it is acceptable to substitute one result/achievement over another goal (e.g., getting appointed vs. elected for a leadership position); to expire a goal because it is no longer interesting or relevant to my current situation; and to not fret if I don’t accomplish a goal at end of the year.

Five years from now, if you look back, as I have done here, you will realize that you have accomplished your most important dreams. And if you don’t dream, you’ll cease to live.