Setting Goals, not Resolutions for the new year

Nicholas Murray
4 min readJan 2, 2023

Setting goals for the year ahead to better yourself, because resolutions are too final and “Only a Sith deal in absolutes”.

Make Goals not Resolutions.

I was never someone who made new years resolutions, it just always seemed like an excuse to say you are going to do something altruistic or grand in the coming year. The reality is most people don’t follow through with any resolutions they set out for themselves, if you want proof compare how busy your local gym is at the start of January to how busy it is at the end of February.

So what’s this article about then?

A few years ago my wife suggested we make some goals for the new year, I didn’t mind the idea of this purely because it wasn’t technically a resolution. But what’s the difference then you might ask?

Well, let’s look at the definition of each word according to Google.

Resolution:

“a firm decision to do or not to do something.”

Looking at the definition of a resolution you can see how definite or final and it can make whatever your resolution is seem daunting, I believe this leads to giving up quickly when you meet the slightest bit of resistance or roadblock. You start to doubt yourself and question whether you can ever succeed with your resolution. This…

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Nicholas Murray

Software Engineer, Father, and Husband. Documenting my journey as a software developer and general tech enthusiast.