How to make the new years resolutionhttp://www.fluentin3months.com/keep-a-new-years-resolution/

Every year around January 1st, my inbox gets filled up with language learners excitedly declaring to me their New Years resolutions. They tell me,this is the year I will learn French! Learn Spanish! Learn Chinese!To all you resolved language learners out there, hoping to make 2015 the year you finally reach your language-learning goals, Id like to offer a bit of guidance in making your New Years resolutions andactually keeping them.To do this, Ill share my own goals for 2015 with you both those I have for my languages, but also my other goals as well and Ill tell you exactly how I plan to achieve them. The strategy is the same for both.BAD NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS TO AVOIDGenerally, most peoples New Years resolutions tend to revolve around the same themes. Here are some examples, that are all technically things thatIwant to do in 2015: Read more. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Learn to swing dance. Perfect my French. Speak Chinese better.These are allbad goals to have, mainly because each one lacks specificity. This is a general theme with New Years Resolutions, and its why I dont even use the term myself, and always prefer to model my life improvements aroundgoals.Ive talked about this before, but it bears repeating: To reach your goals, you have to actuallyhave a goal. You need an end-point that you can visualize and know for sure whether or not youre on track, and when youve achieved it.If your goal is to improve your French, how will you know when youre done? If you want to read more, how will you know if youre on track? Have you reached your goal if you read for 1 day? For 30 days? How can you gauge your progress?The trick to making a New Years resolution that actually sticks to is tovisualize your resolutions in concrete terms.Here are some examples.MY 2015 NEW YEARS GOALSTo show you what I mean, here are several of my own genuine goals for 2015, all of which are much more specific versions of the vague resolutions above: Read 60 books by November. Run a half marathon by March. Run a full marathon by November. Restrict pasta, chocolate and sodas to 1 day per week (Saturday only) Be ready to swing dance confidently as a very solid beginner by November. Take a mock C2 (mastery level) exam in French by July. Reach B2 (fluency) in Mandarin by November.TIP 1: CREATE GOALS THAT ARE SPECIFIC AND MEASURABLE

One reason I like the word goal overresolutionis that it has a idea of measurement behind it. A goal is something that can be reached something I can check off my list and know exactly when Ive reached it.Note how each of the goals Ive chosen is both specific and measurable. Theres no way to be unclear about whether or not Ive read 60 books. Ive either run a half marathon or I havent. But read more and exercise more are nebulous and quite useless because of this.You will also notice that (apart from the weekly eating restriction) all of my goalshave a specific deadline. December tends to involve travel and time with family, so if I am taking on a longer-term goal (as you can imagineI prefer three month goals) thenit ends in Novemberat the latest.TIP 2: ALLOW YOURSELF TO FEEL A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT AND PROGRESSEach of the goals Ive created means something real to me. For example, when I say I want to learn the basics of swing dancing, I say this because Ill be attending a wedding in November and I hope to be able to swing dance at the reception.Do I expect to be amazing at it? Do I want to compete at world-competition levels? No. Not for now at least. I just expect to be able to dancewellin a casual setting. This is a realistic goal, especially since I will be living in multiple places and can only realistically get a few classes per month.Maybe for 2016 or 2017 I can have more hefty goals like training for dance competitions, but realistically dancing at a specific wedding is all I want to care about for now, and that will make further improvement much easier.In my running goals, Ive also included two separate benchmarks. First a half-marathon, then a marathon. Ive broken this up into separate milestones so that I can feel progress in the smaller wins, rather than focusing only on the biggest possible endpoint.If youre a member ofmy email list, you know that I ended 2014 by taking a mock C1 exam with my French teacher, and that Ive decided to make fluency in Chinese a priority for this year.Ive been studying Frenchfor yearsand this goal is a single point on a much longer road.Imagine if, when I started studying each language years ago, my goal was just to learn French. I still wouldnt be there! Insteadevery language project Ive ever had has been based on milestones.TIP 3: KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS AND DONT LET SETBACKS DERAIL YOUR MOMENTUMOne of my goals, for example, is to eat healthier, but Ive chosen to measure my progress here by allotting one day a week as cheat day. For me, Saturday is cheat day. And I know that if I eat a gnocchi or a chocolate lava cake on any other day except cheat day, then I havent met my goal for that week.But when that happens, I dont just throw the whole plan out the window, because cheat day comes around every single week. Every week Ill still have my Saturday cheat day looming over me, holding me accountable, giving me another chance to succeed.

Dont expect yourself to be a super hero. Dont give yourself unrealistic expectations like stop eating chocolate, because when you inevitably give in to temptation, youre likely to give up your goal entirely because youve already failed.My goal of running a half marathon might also be an unrealistic goal for me if I was a total newbie at running. Pretty much every successful marathon runner Ive come across has had smaller milestones.For instance, the picture at the top of the post is me getting ready to runmy first ever 5Klast year in Valencia. It took me two whole months to train myself to be able to run that much more modest distance, and I wasexhaustedat the end of it!Ive since pushed my boundaries up to running 10k, then running the same distance and feeling great afterwards and continue to improve my endurance and speed, so that a half-marathon within 3 months is realistic.When you make your goals measurable, you can recognize your progress rather than your failures, and use that to keep up your momentum. Celebrate all the weeks that you make progress. Focus on your wins!USE TOOLS TO TRACK YOUR PROGRESSThe tools you use to recognize your progress will make a huge difference in your success. Having looming reminders, social competitions and other psychological motivators help a lot. Here are my favourites!Language goalsMy current favourite social tool for language learning isMemrisebecause I find the daily/weekly/monthly scoreboard to be an excellent motivator. This tool is great if you have a specific number of words you want to memorize, with of course the excellent mnemonics that help you remember.Follow me here.Overall To-DosI useCoach.me(formally Lift) for my daily to-dos. I like this tool because I can search for specific daily tasks that may be key to my longer term goal, that an entire community has grown around, and I cantickeach daily task from my smartphone.You canfollow me here(keeping in mind that December is my month off) or check out the plan for language learners I made for that sitehere. I have public goals I dont mind others seeing for social feedback, and can make other goals private.Pretty much every goal you can imagine has a community around it on that site!Reading goals

Goodreads is by far the best community for sharing reading goals, with the most in-depth reviews of books. Once you track enough books read on the site, it starts to give you exceptionally good recommendations based on your interests. Peoplelikeyour updates (you even update progresswithinbooks and how far you are in each one you are reading) and can send you personal recommendations.I keep my Goodreads up to date on what Im reading. Followmy profile here!Exercise goalsI useEndomondoto track my jogs, and help me plan how much I should run to realistically reach my goal, based on my past progress. Then when I run, I have my smartphone with me and my speed and distance are tracked automatically through GPS updates.HERE ARE TEAM FI3MS 2015 GOALS WHAT ARE YOURS?This January, I still want my inbox to be filled with language learners sharing their goals with me, but this year Id like to hear more aboutspecificallywhat level youd like to achieve and why, and how you plan to get there.To give you even more inspiration, here are the New Years resolutions of some other members of Team FI3M. Share your own in the comments!Balint

Read 100 books Reach C1 level in German and pass the exam Reach solid B2 conversation level in Spanish Go to the most Northestern point of Europe by car Simplify my life a bit more every week Finish another Ironman (if my back allows)Joseph

Read 50 books Do physical activity at least 3 times per week Double the amount of money that I put into savingsLauren

Run a 5k Cook my way through Alton Browns repertoire (at least 20 recipes) Learn the basics of swing dancing Reach B2 level in Esperanto Reach B1 level in Russian Reach A2 level in FrenchKittichai

Learn at least 1,800 Joyo Kanji Read 10 books in Japanese Exercise at least for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. Wake up before6:30 am Go to the beach!David

Paint the dining room (were aiming to have this finished onJan 1!) Paint & new carpet in the guest bedroom Paint & new carpet in my office Fully clear my wifes new allotment & eat vegetables grown on it. Spend at least one weekend in complete silence Read an average of 1 book per week (52 books)Now its your turn! What are your goals for 2015? How can you adjust your goals to bemeasurable, or to create milestones to measure your progress?