I saw two magazines side by side in the checkout aisle of the supermarket today with the same headline:  “Organize Your Life! ”   New Year’s Day is right around the corner.  Six days away, to be exact.  The resolutions are beckoning.

If you’re serious about organizing your life or making any other changes come January 1, you’d better get started right now.  It’s time to build the foundation for success.   The number one reason people fail to change unwanted behavior is not setting goals they can achieve.

Here are 5 guidelines to follow for successful change.  They’re easy to remember if you think SMART.  Make sure your goals are:

1)    Specific.  Break your goals down into observable behaviors.

2)    Measurable.  You should be able to determine the outcome quantitatively.  Be scientific.

3)    Achievable.  Take small steps.

4)    Realistic.  Be sure your long-term goal isn’t too rigid and unsustainable.

5)    Timely.   Create daily and weekly changes to shoot for.

Let’s put the Organize Your Life goal to the SMART test.  Is it specific?  No, it’s too vague.  Is it measurable?  No, you can’t measure organization without first defining it.  Is it achievable?  No, you can’t achieve it if you haven’t defined it.   Is it realistic?  No, it’s too all-or-nothing.  Is it timely?  No, you can’t set a timeline for completing goals if you can’t measure them.

If organizing your life seems like an attractive way to wipe the slate clean and start the new year out fresh, you’ll be dooming yourself to failure before you even start unless you make the Organize Your Life goal SMARTer.   Let’s take a stab at it.

1)    The concept of organization has many components:  managing your time efficiently, keeping track of bills, getting rid of clutter, and meeting deadlines. Decide on one or two specific aspects of organization you want to tackle.  Don’t get caught in the trap of aiming for perfection.  If you want to organize a messy house, say, start with a small, specific goal:  I will clean out the kitchen junk drawer.

2)    List all the steps you’ll need to take to accomplish the goal.  Cleaning out the junk drawer may mean throwing out a collection of rubber bands and twist ties, sorting through old warrantees to file or dispose of, collecting loose change and putting it in your wallet, wiping out crumbs, and making a trip to Target for plastic bins to keep everything tidy.  You can measure each step and check it off after you’ve completed it.

3)    An achievable goal isn’t overly ambitious.  Rein in your perfectionistic aspirations and start small.  You’ll need to silence the inner voice that’s telling you, “What good will cleaning the kitchen junk drawer do when the whole house is a mess?”  Set yourself up for success, not failure.

4)    Deciding to clean the kitchen junk drawer is realistic.  It won’t discourage you, and you’ll see results quickly enough to motivate you for the next task.  You can also maintain the change by planning to spend five minutes once a month (specific, measurable, achievable and timely!) tossing out the odds and ends you’re bound to accumulate again.

5)    As you can see, specific and realistic goals lend themselves to timeliness.  You can decide whether to take an hour, a day, or a week to finish cleaning the drawer.  But don’t drag it out any longer, or you’ll lose steam.

After you’ve accomplished a small piece of the larger goal, give yourself a pat on the back.  Then move on to the next step.  If you’re making sure to stay SMART, you’ll have lots of opportunities to feel good about your progress even if you haven’t yet reached the endpoint.

I’ve decided one of my goals for the new year is to write three blog posts a week.  Is this SMART?  Even though it’s very specific and measureable, I’m not sure if it’s achievable, realistic, or timely.  So I need to revise it.  I’ll plan to write one post a week for the month of January.  If that works, then I can aim for two posts in February.  At that point, I’ll reassess my original goal and see if I still want to produce three posts a week.

Try creating your own SMART goals, and we’ll work on them together.  I’ll be posting more tips in the coming weeks.  Maybe even more than once a week!  Oops.  I’m getting ahead of myself.