Stick to your goals and resolutions this year: turn them into verbs.

From the Happiness PhD Project with Jackson Kerchis

Goal setting is overrated.

That’s right, even “SMART goals” are not very effective.

The problem with traditional goal setting (and SMART goal setting) is it does not require you to actually articulate the behaviors or systems that lead to the achievement of said goals. They define the outputs but ignore the inputs. Or as Yale psychologist Laurie Santos would say, they fall for the “GI Joe Fallacy”.

In the old cartoon, GI Joe, the protagonist used to say “knowing is half the battle” — Santos explains that knowing is absolutely NOT “half the battle.” Pretty much all of us know we should eat junk food less, sleep more, exercise more, smartphone less, and focus more on high priority projects.

To do it is the challenge!

So this is what I suggest: take your goal or resolution and think: "what is one small daily or weekly behavior that would make me absolutely certain to succeed? What is the input for this output?”

Then turn that into a verb-based goal with one of these templates:

• (time-based) On [days] I will [do behavior] at these [times] in [location].

• (routine-based) After I [current part of routine] I will [new behavior].

I want to lose ten pounds this year becomes

• On M, W, F I will do 30 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of weight training at 5:15pm at the Planet Fitness near my house.

I want to read more this year becomes

• After I pour my morning coffee I will read for 10 minutes.

I want to be a better dad becomes

• After I walk through the door getting home from work I will create one positive interaction with my wife and/or kids.

That's it. It's literally that simple. Forget about your goal/resolution and stick to verbs.

Your happiness nerd,

Jackson K.

PS — This is one of my more popular videos, you might enjoy it.