With 2023 just around the corner, now is the best time to plan your New Year’s resolutions.
The start of the New Year is a chance to set a plan for your career and personal development and start new habits. Leaving the old year behind, you can look ahead to improve the overall quality of your life. Like many of us do every year. A recent Finder survey reveals that over 55% of American adults make New Year’s resolutions.
To help you with goal-setting, you can use New Year’s resolution templates. Using templates makes it easier to document your goals for the new year.
In this article, we’ll give you several New Year’s resolution templates to get you started. But before going into detail about our New Year’s resolution templates, let’s talk about why people make new year’s resolutions in the first place.
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Why Do People Set New Year’s Resolutions
A New Year’s resolution is a promise you make for the new year. The start of the new year is the most popular time for people to set resolutions. People see the start of the New Year as a blank slate. A new chapter that creates an opportunity to get things right. To get their lives better.
Humans have a natural tendency towards self-improvement, and the new year provides us with a goal date. You can prepare for the plans you want to implement and get your mind ready for the change. You also give yourself a little time to enjoy your old habits for the last few days or weeks – like eating chocolate before introducing a healthy diet, for example.
Ultimately, we see the end of the year as an opportunity to hit a reset button and start fresh. New Year brings hope for such a change, so people are more confident to make resolutions.
Making resolutions also sets a challenge. By making resolutions, you can explore your potential and grow as an individual and member of a family or society. Or, if you are a project manager, you can set work-related goals for yourself and your team.
You can review where you are now and what you want to achieve. The end of the year is the perfect time to reflect. Am I living the life I want to live? Am I content with my current personal and career situation? What’s the area that I especially want to improve on? What’s my biggest dream?
New Year’s goal setting can take you a step closer to a positive change.
How To Set New Year’s Resolutions
Setting your News Year’s resolutions means planning and then acting on the plan. You set goals and work toward achieving them, like with any other goal.
Are you familiar with the feeling of full determination when you create your resolutions in January, but then your enthusiasm fizzles out by February? To avoid this, follow the steps below when making your New Year’s resolutions:
- Step 1: Reflect on yourself and prepare mentally for what’s coming. Committing to making changes and feeling positive about setting your resolutions increases the chances of sticking to your promise and improving your life.
- Step 2: Set a realistic number of goals. Coming up with plenty of resolutions at once can soon turn out to be overwhelming. Try to limit the number of resolutions instead. This will allow you to allocate sufficient energy to each goal. After all, you can always add more goals at any time of the year once you’ve accomplished the things on your New Year’s bucket list.
- Step 3: Browse through our New Year’s resolution templates and choose your favorite one. Print it, and fill it in with your goals. Hang your worksheet somewhere to see it every day. That should minimize the chances of getting distracted and discouraged from reaching your goals.
- Step 4: Come up with an action plan. A well-thought-out plan for accomplishing your goals increases the chances of following it. Your action plan should consider the process, activities, timelines, and resources.
- Step 5: Get support. Having someone to cheer you on along the way increases your sense of accountability and raises your chance of success. Even better if you can find a friend who has similar resolutions and wants to join your plan of action. You can motivate each other toward achieving your New Year’s goals.
- Step 6: Measure your progress regularly. Reward yourself for every little success. Create a reward system for yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back, a round of applause, or treat yourself with something that makes you smile. Studies prove that rewards increase people’s motivation to keep going toward their goals.
Be careful with the rewards, though, as too many can negatively affect your motivation and can result in the overjustification effect.
Lastly, don’t be too hard on yourself. Have some compassion, as no one is perfect. When you encounter roadblocks or feel like you’re failing, take a deep breath, restructure your plan, and give it another shot.
👉 Read our recommended article: 17 Most Popular Time Management Techniques in 2023 and learn time management techniques to make your New Year’s resolutions stick.
Most Popular New Year’s Resolutions
Although it’s best to make your own goals based on your needs and abilities, there are some popular resolutions that people tend to take on every year.
Below are the illustrated results of research published by Statista. It reveals that 23% of Americans wanted to start 2022 by living healthier. Implementing healthy living was at the top of the most popular new year resolutions of 2022.
Personal improvement or happiness ranked second place, with 21% of respondents making it their top New Year’s resolution.
Losing weight also made it to the top three of the most popular resolutions, with 20% of Americans claiming it was their main goal.
Other top resolutions relate to career or job goals, financial goals, improving relationships, traveling or moving, exercising, quitting smoking, and reducing intake of alcoholic drinks.
Remember, you don’t have to follow other people’s resolutions. However, these most popular resolutions can inspire you when coming up with your own new year resolutions.
How Templates Help Achieve New Year’s Resolutions
Only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions. Although this figure can be demotivating, most people fail to achieve their goals and stick to their resolutions due to a lack of motivation. They simply get lost as they progress through the year.
Due to everyday responsibilities related to work, family, and friends, you can quickly lose interest and motivation in your goals. As a result, what were to be year-long promises often don’t last more than a few weeks.
New Year’s resolution templates can help with this. Having a printed plan of action and seeing it every day helps to constantly remind you of your goals and resolutions. Without a goal-setting template, you risk forgetting about your resolutions. As the days go by, you will soon lose your motivation and give up on them. Don’t risk it!
Using templates has proved to work in various studies. One of them was led by psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews at the Dominican University in California. Dr. Matthews led a study on goal-setting with nearly 270 participants. The results were that people are 42% more likely to reach their goals if they write them down.
So, writing your goals down makes it clear what you want to accomplish and works as a motivator for you to complete the tasks necessary for your success.
Using various templates in your personal and professional everyday life helps with planning, monitoring, and actioning on your tasks. In addition, filling out daily schedule templates and time-tracking spreadsheets, among many other worksheets, encourages you to ask questions, strategize, and brainstorm your plan of action.
Printable New Year’s Resolution Templates
Here are the 12 free New Year’s resolution templates that will help you get started creating your resolutions and the action plans for accomplishing them.
Template #1 New Year Fresh Start
The Fresh Start New Year’s resolution template will help you create rock-solid resolutions. The sections allow you to write the things to do better and the new skills you want to learn.
There’s space for notes where you can put down important information related to the resolutions you’ve listed in the first two sections. This can include your checkpoints or budget, for example.
Template #2 This Year I Will…
The “This Year I Will” template has plenty of blank space for writing down your New Year Resolutions. In this case, you can make your list plain and write down your goals or include notes as well, as there is plenty of room.
Template #3 Saving Planner
With the Saving Planner New Year’s resolution template, you can list your savings ideas throughout the year. There are also boxes for your monthly and yearly goals.
It’s a great new year’s resolution template for anyone focusing on financial resolutions.
Template #4 My Bucket List
The “My Bucket List” template allows you to list your project (or up to four projects) along with a skill you want to learn and a new healthy habit you plan to take on.
Template #5 Looking Ahead to Worksheet
The “Looking Ahead to Worksheet” template allows you to write down things you are looking forward to achieving in 2023.
Choose your main goal and write it down in the box provided, along with the actions needed to achieve it, right next to it. There’s space for notes too.
Template #6 New Year Goals
The New Year Goals worksheet gives space to write down up to five ideas for your 2023 resolutions. The minimalist design helps to focus on what is most important. Print it and hang it over your desk while creating a personalized desk setup.
Template #7 Happy New Year Resolutions
Next on our New Year’s resolution templates is the cheerful Happy New Year worksheet. This one cannot be missed. The bright colors and energetic design will put a smile on your face every time you see it passing by.
Plus, it can inspire other people around you to get a similar template and make resolutions for themselves.
Template #8 New Year’s Promise List
The New Year’s Promise List allows you to simply write down your project and anything that relates to achieving it. There’s plenty of space, so this one will work if you have several resolutions.
Template #9 My Personal Resolution
The My Personal Resolution template is perfect when you want to work on only one goal. This template lets you write down that goal and the steps you will take to accomplish it. It’s simple and effective.
You also have a Notes section to write additional information.
Template #10 Monthly Goals
Download the 2023 Monthly Goals worksheet above if you aim to stick to a different resolution each month. This template will help you set clear monthly goals. Then, track progress and tick the boxes as you complete them.
Template #11 Things I Want To…
The next one from our New Year’s resolution templates is the 2023 Things I Want To… worksheet. Like with some other templates, this one allows you to split your goals into a few categories: the things you want to do, try, share and succeed at.
Make sure you own it by putting your name at the top!
Template #12 The Best Year
If you are looking for a fun and colorful template, you might want to consider using this one. The template allows you to focus on things you want to learn, improve at, and make time for in 2023.
Final Thoughts
The end of the year is a great time to make New Year’s resolutions and improve your life. This article gave you an insight into why people make resolutions, tips to set them, and some most popular ones.
Using the above printable New Year’s resolution templates increases your chances of reaching your goals. A template at your sight will help you track your progress and stay motivated.
It will be clear what you want to change. Plus, you can create a system for applying positive changes and rewarding yourself when you do.
Now, go on and choose one for yourself. Print it and fill it in with your own New Year’s resolutions. Over to you!
