New-year intentions often start strong: more exercise, more reading, more thoughtful spending. Then the initial excitement fades. Working on a script gives way to Netflix, meal preparation loses out to takeout, and change gets postponed until next week—or next year.

Frameworks such as SMART, FAST, and OKRs offer plenty of structure, but they don’t suit everyone. If familiar methods have produced disappointing results, a different approach may fit your life better.

Define What You Want to Avoid

When Tiny Co-Founder Andrew Wilkinson found work interfering with the life he wanted, his days were crowded with meetings, stressful demands, and people he disliked doing business with. He responded by creating anti-goals.

Rather than describing an ideal day, Wilkinson pictured his worst one—full of meetings, travel, and fatigue—and devised rules to prevent it. To avoid lengthy meetings, for example, he decided against scheduling an in-person meeting when email, a phone call, or no meeting could accomplish the same thing.

An anti-goal starts with a specific unwanted condition. Coach and Reboot CEO Jerry Colonna offers a useful question: how are your own actions helping create the circumstances you say you don’t want?

To develop your own anti-goals:

  1. Divide a blank sheet of paper vertically into two columns.
  2. On the left, write 3-10 aspects of work or life you want to avoid or eliminate.
  3. Opposite each item, write an anti-goal with a concrete solution to that problem.

Examining the life you don’t want can clarify how to build the one you do.

Make Your Goals Tiny

A goal can be specific, measurable, and achievable yet still feel overwhelming. Writing a 40,000 word young adult novel may be possible, but facing a blank page is different from planning the book. Writing 50 words a day presents a much smaller obstacle.

That is the principle behind micro-goals: identify the smallest daily action that moves you toward your larger ambition. Keep it under 10 minutes; 5 minutes is better still. Then repeat it every day.

Such small commitments may seem too easy to matter, especially if you expect progress to require intense effort. They offer several advantages:

  • A clear starting point. Large ambitions can leave you unsure what to do first; a micro-goal specifies the next action.
  • A foundation for habits. Repetition builds a routine, reducing dependence on motivation.
  • Attention to the process. Outcomes such as losing 10 pounds or helping your community become immediate, practical actions rather than distant destinations.
  • Room for extra effort. Sometimes five minutes of reading becomes an hour, or one completed task leads to several. Treat that as optional, not a new requirement, or the small goal can become overwhelming again.
  • Accumulating improvement. Deliberate daily practice can produce gains over time. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, describes this effect as “the power of tiny gains,” illustrated by the compounding effect of improving 1% each day.

Graphic attribution: jamesclear.com.

If large goals feel unmanageable, a small daily accomplishment can provide a way forward. Pairing micro-goals with the Don’t Break the Chain method lets you track each day’s action and build a streak.

Choose a Theme for the Year

Trying to become healthier, better read, and more financially secure all at once can scatter your attention. An annual theme offers a shared direction instead of a long list of separate targets.

YouTuber and podcaster CGP Grey has suggested an annual theme as an alternative to New Year’s resolutions. His examples include a “Year of Reading” or “Year of Health” rather than a fixed weight-loss target or a requirement to read a book every week. In his view, the breadth is intentional: for personal development, a trend in the right direction can matter more than precise data points.

Use your theme as a filter for decisions at work and elsewhere. Reflection, perhaps through an annual review, may reveal what you need. Burnout could point toward a “Year of Rest”; a relationship in a rut might suggest a “Year of Passion.” If a theme immediately comes to mind, consider choosing it.

A theme can influence more than the area that prompted it. A year centered on “fun,” for example, might lead you to:

  • Read comics and graphic novels rather than business books.
  • Initiate plans with friends and arrange enjoyable activities.
  • Propose work projects you would enjoy doing.
  • Let your children’s interests guide your time together.
  • Join a dodge-ball league to become more physically active.

Choose a direction that makes the coming months feel engaging rather than burdensome.

Reshape Your Surroundings

Repeated difficulty reaching a goal may reflect your environment, not just your intentions. Homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and social circles can encourage unwanted behavior without your noticing.

Changing those surroundings can make helpful choices easier and remove temptations before you encounter them. That does not make the change itself easy: finding another job or new friends takes time and may be uncomfortable even when it seems necessary.

Consider how a different setting could affect your life, then give yourself an opportunity to experience that difference.

Experiment With Having No Goals

Another option is to stop setting goals altogether. If you’re accustomed to pursuing explicit targets, that may sound incompatible with accomplishing anything.

Leo Babauta, the writer behind Zen Habits, argues that having no goal can be the best goal. He describes living largely without goals as liberating, not as abandoning achievement: the point is to stop letting predetermined targets limit what you do.

In Babauta’s view, removing obligatory action steps can also remove a source of procrastination. Instead, you can fill your days with activities that engage your passions and explore your curiosity. Those interests may offer a more useful guide to your time and energy than a list assembled simply because it was January 1.

Trying an unfamiliar approach can feel risky. But if conventional methods have repeatedly left you in the same place, repeating them for another year carries its own risk. Allow yourself to explore whether a different way of living and working suits you better.

By Fadeke Adegbuyi

Fadeke is a writer and marketer interested in stories about better ways to live and work.