Resolutions are worthless IMO. They have nothing behind them other then empty words with plan for action on how to achieve them. To achieve anything worth achieving in life you need written goals with a plan of action on how you will achieve the goals.
The plan of action should be broken down to what you will do daily, weekly, and monthly to achieve your goal.
The goal also needs to be realistic or you will easily justify why you give up..."oh I wasn't ever going to actually be able to loose 50 pounds, what was I thinking". But if you have a goal of loosing 24 pounds this year and 2 per month which is 1/2 pound a week you have something that is easily tracked and very realistic (assuming you need to loose that much weight). From there you need to know how many calories that means you need to remove from your diet or to burn each day that you currently aren't. 3500 calories is about 1 pound, or 1750 calories for 1/2 pound, or removing 250 calories per day from your current diet.
Wait, 250 calories a day isn't that bad right? A 12oz can of Coke is 150 calories and walking 1 mile for an 180 pound person and you have that. So skip 1 soda and walk 1 mile per day and in a year it's 24 pounds lost.
This is a real Goal with a Real Action Plan. It's also something that easily can become a habit. Once you see the changes to your body in a few weeks you will start walking a little further and likely make a few other good decisions each day for your diet.
This all applies to any part of your life, but since so many people think about their weight at this time of year I figured it was a good example.
Ok that turned into way to long of a comment, going to need to reuse some of that for a post...lol.
BTW, I think below is a quick edit for you.
Based on my current life experience and observations I would say that the majority of people are sticking to resolutions and almost automatically they treat them as "wishes".
I'm guessing you meant aren't
It seem that we're on the same page.
You nailed it!
BIG thx for your great comment thedarkhorse. I appreciate it a lot.
I was also wondering how do you handle stress and frustration once you realize that you cannot reach your goals and targets?
Yours
Piotr
Getting stressed about things isn't really my thing. Life is way to short to allow little things to stress me out and short of major events in life not much will put me in a stress mode. Pressure is something I work really well under as I don't get stressed about it, but rather get a laser like focus on the task at hand.
But most people can avoid these reactions just by understanding how an action plan to reach their goal is to work.
By having clear written goals with an action plan that what needs to be done daily, weekly, and monthly with checkpoints along the way for your goal you will know long before your goal date that you need to either adjust your goal or your effort.
Just using the weight loss goal above as an example if you are honest with yourself and realize 3 days into your week that you've missed your 250 calorie reduction goal each day by 75 calories then you know you need to make it up. You need to either adjust the next 4 days and spread that 75 calories out or find a way to add an extra workout into 1 day to burn those calories.
If after a few weeks you still are always coming in under the required calorie reduction you need to either adjust all of the future weeks higher which likely isn't realistic at this point in time, or figure out how many calories you are over and how many weeks that will take on the back end to make up then adjust your target date. If you aren't targeting a date for a specific reason this is easy, but if you are targeting a date for a wedding or something you need to then decide how important that exact weight is to you and actually step up your effort or accept you will be say 2 pounds short of your goal. Don't be stupid and starve yourself, stay on a healthy path and reach the goal that you can without doing harm to your body.
Business goals are the same, if you plan to have a project done by a set date you can break up the work over the period of time before your deadline. If you start falling behind you know that more effort is needed to catch up. If there just aren't enough hours in the day to achieve your goal then you need to be honest with yourself earlier then later and see if the date can be backed up or find some help with the project. Waiting until the last minute and missing a deadline that was set weeks or months ago just isn't acceptable. Personally business goals should be achieved early in the eyes of the boss or customer, that is if it's a 4 week deadline make your plans for 3 weeks and 3 days. This allows you to deliver early (under promise and over deliver) or if needed back up your planned goal date by a day if you aren't finding it possible to stick to the plan.
Wow. Thank you for this amazing comment @thedarkhorse
RESPECT :)
Piotr