Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Time of family gatherings, reunions and many traditions. One of them, both on a personal and professional level, is to establish new objectives or purposes for the year ahead. A tradition that Bill Gates respects, but believes is not very beneficial.
“I have never liked New Year’s resolutions. I don’t have any specific objective when one starts”the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft wrote a few years ago on his blog.
Instead of setting goals for the next year, Gates asks himself a series of questions that help him take “stock of his work and personal life.”
These questions are: What went wrong last year? What went well? What do you expect for the next 365 days?
Gates notes that as he gets older, his annual questions have evolved to take on a more personal slant.
“Have I dedicated enough time to my family? Have I learned enough new things? Have I developed new friendships and deepened old ones?” he writes. “These things would have been unthinkable to me when I was 25, but as I get older, they are much more meaningful. Asking myself these questions is much more effective and valuable to me than setting goals.“.
Science supports Gates’ position
According to clinical psychologist Joseph J. Luciani, about 80% of people who set New Year’s resolutions (like going to the gym, reading more books, or adopting a new diet) abandon them by the second week of February.
The reason, as Luciani wrote, is that Grand goals and results-oriented mindsets are much harder to achieve than “small successes” and process-oriented mindsets.
The author emphasizes the importance of establish a discipline that helps us achieve our goals and in working in systems rather than in large resolutions.
For example, if we want to lose weight, do not set a figure as such, but work on creating a habit to go running several times a week or establish a weekly meal menu that helps us.
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