A Goal Without a Plan Is Only a Resolution

By Chris Law
Every year around the time the calendar changes millions of people make New Year’s Resolutions.  Personally I don’t make resolutions.   I prefer to make “goals”.  Resolutions seem so… spineless.  What happens if you don’t follow through on your resolutions?  Nothing really, we just wait until next January and make them again, hopefully with a bit more resolve this time.  My father has made the same New Year’s Resolution for at least the last 13 years.  Every year he resolves to finally clean the attic of all the boxes of kids' crap that accumulated while their four children grew up, and every year those boxes gather a bit more dust.

Goals are different.  With a goal you have only two options: success or failure.  There is really no other way to look at it.  This won’t come as much of a surprise, but I like success much more than failure, and therefore I’m forced to invest more into meeting a goal than I ever would a resolution.

My goal next year is to make more money.  That sounds simple enough, and it’s a very good goal, one that anyone in business for themselves should share.  Now that I have a goal the next step is to make a plan.  The late French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said “A goal without a plan is simply a wish”, or to fit with our theme, a resolution.  To help you with that planning part here is an article from USA Today with 12 ideas geared toward helping you make more money in 2012 than you did in 2011.