Here are a few resources to help you get the new year off to a great start.
What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done. Of course I’ll be recommending my book here! The beginning of the year is a good time to refine your mission, vision, roles and goals. What’s Best Next can help you as you think through these higher levels. It can also help at the levels of improving how you organize your projects and actions, as well as dealing with productivity killers such as procrastination and multi-tasking.
Seven Principles for Setting Goals that Work. My post at Michael Hyatt’s blog from earlier this year. These principles can be helpful in setting new year’s resolutions, which are really just a type of goal.
The Yearly Review. My interview on Moody South Radio’s Fresh Start from yesterday on the benefits of reviewing your year and how to do it. (5-8 minutes or so.)
Setting New Years Resolutions You’ll Actually Stick With. A live Q&A Michael Hyatt is doing on Friday.
New Year’s Resolutions and 1 Thessalonians 1. A great lab by John Piper (as are all of them). Is it biblical to set resolutions? Interestingly, the Bible actually speaks very affirmingly of resolutions. What the Bible especially commends is setting resolutions for good. That is an exciting thing. “He who is noble plans noble things” (Isaiah 32:8).
And my chief tips for New Year’s resolutions today are this:
- Read God’s Word. The best resolution you can make is likely to go deeper in daily, focused reading and study in God’s word — and then, of course, to do what it says (James 2:22-25). If most Christians simply made this single resolution, it would have a greater impact than anything else.
- Follow God’s Word. In relation to point 1, note again the extreme importance of actually doing what the Bible says. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). This is a point that Jesus made over and over, and which stuck with the disciples as one of the most important take-aways from his entire ministry. It’s not enough just to read and study the Bible and listen to good preaching. You have to do what it says. Obviously you can’t do what it says if you don’t know what it says; interestingly, as you do what it says you will find that you come to understand what it says even more deeply.
- Get a Head Start. Start your New Year’s resolutions a week early. Sorry for the late nature of this tip! I’ve found this is one of the best ways to help ensure you stick with your resolution(s), because it enables you to go into the year already having some momentum. You already feel ahead, and thus in the second or third week of January, when most people quit, you might already have the habit in place and make it through.