How To Set Goals & Achieve Them: Setting Realistic Goals For 2022


We can’t believe the year is almost over…

It’s that time of year where we reflect on how it went, what goals we achieved and whether it was a “good†year or not.

According to Discover Happy Habits, for 2021, 31% of people planned on making New Year’s resolutions. In the previous year, only 27% made them. They’ve broken down the success and failure rate of how resolutions typically go too:

  • 75% of people who’ve made New Year’s resolutions are still successful at keeping them after the first week

  • After two weeks into the new year, this drops to 71%

  • After a month, this drops again to 64%

  • After 6 months, 46% of people who make a resolution are still successful in keeping it.

  • In comparison, of those people who have similar goals but do not set a resolution, only 4% are still successful after 6 months.

Why New Year’s resolutions fail

As you can see, the New Year’s resolution success rate is extremely low. Here’s why.

Goals aren’t realistic

If you plan on mastering a skill, for example, that you’ve never even touched before, how are you supposed to achieve that in a year? This obviously depends on a case-by-case basis, but typically, this is far too much to take on.

We set too many goals

It’s great to want to achieve many things, but with that comes an overwhelming amount of goals to achieve.

Plans aren’t made properly

Have you figured out how you’re actually going to achieve your goals? Is there anyone who can support you along the way? If you’ve set goals hoping they’ll just happen, then it’s a recipe for failure. Proper planning is key.

Habits aren’t made

Staying focused on your goals can be hard. Are you working at your goals every day, week, month, etc? If you aren’t habit-tracking, then your goals are likely to fall off the wayside.

We don’t keep track of our goals

How do you know if you’ve achieved your goals already or you’re way off? This goes back to habit tracking, but having a place to keep track and review your goals will help you see where you’re at.

What do you want to achieve in 2022? As the old saying goes, “those who fail to plan, plan to failâ€. By making goals SMART (yep, the SMART targets are back I’m afraid), then you’ll set yourself up for success. But first, let’s look at what you need to do first

Before You Start Goal Setting for 2022

There’s no point setting new year goals when you don’t know where you’re at! Here’s what to do before you jump the gun.

Do a SWOT analysis of your life

What are your strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats has there been? What could you do to overcome the latter? This is a good opportunity to to see how they’ll impact the goals you set.

Where do you see yourself in a year’s time?

Where are you at now and where would you like to be in 12 months? Could it be something as mastering 10 new meals? Saving an extra £50 a month? Graduating with a 1st? Visualising what this could look like is a powerful way to set things in motion. It could be useful to benchmark this against peers with similar goals too (just be careful not to compare yourself, that isn’t the goal here!).

Reflect on last year’s goals

Did you even set any goals? How many did you achieve? Why didn’t you achieve them? This isn’t a time to be harsh on yourself. It’s an opportunity to find out ways that didn’t work and ways that can. This is where working SMART comes in!

If goal setting sounds wishy-washy to you, why not actually give it a try this year? You could surprise yourself.

How to set goals and achieve them

And now for the good stuff. Let’s look at how you can achieve goals in 2022 and beyond.

Know your “whyâ€

This is another way of saying “what’s your motivation?â€. Just setting a goal for the sake of having one won’t motivate you to achieve it.

Did you know, motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic?

Intrinsic motivation is something that serves and is satisfying personally, like saving money and how that makes you feel. Whereas extrinsic motivation is linked to external rewards like a good grade on your assignment. Knowing this will help define your why for each goal you set.

Make your goals SMART

When you come up with a goal, it needs to be broken down into mini-goals or tasks. This is where the SMART acronym finally comes to play here.

For every goal, make sure the plans to achieve it are:

  • Specific – “save money†vs “save £50 a month†are two very different ways of setting a money-based goal

  • Measurable – “get better grades†vs “get a 1st on X assignment by seeking support every week from my tutorâ€

  • Attainable – “Be happy†vs “practice mindfulness once a weekâ€

  • Realistic – “Cut out sugar cold turkey†vs “reduce sugar intake by cutting it out of my morning coffee†(assuming you love sugar)

  • Timebound – “study more†vs “I want to be at an A2 level in French within 6 monthsâ€

Make a vision board

Vision boards are extremely powerful ways to visualise your future. It’s often used in coaching and therapy to help clients gear towards positive changes and habits.

You could do it the old-fashioned way by cutting images out of magazines, printing our pictures, and making a collage. Or use a Pinterest board to add images to on your device.

This Psychology Today article explains the power of vision boards and ideas on making one.

Get stationary discounts with Student Beans to build your vision board!

Have your life goals in mind

You don’t necessarily have to know what this looks like completely, but we all have some sort of future goal in mind.

This could be as simple as renting in your favourite city, owning a house by the time you’re a certain age, living abroad for a year, or being at a certain level of your career. Set goals in favour of your future, because your future self will thank you for it.

You may even discover along the way you don’t want to achieve that thing in the future anymore too, which is also a success in itself and an opportunity to tweak your goals throughout the year.

Write your goals down somewhere accessible

This could be on a physical pinboard, a whiteboard or on your phone. Put them somewhere you can clearly access them every single day.

Create milestones

As we learned previously, people give up on their goals really fast due to the overwhelm or loss of motivation.

By dividing your big goals into smaller ones, you can create a bigger sense of satisfaction for yourself and work towards your bigger goals in the long run.

Track your progress

Tracking your progress is important to know where you’re at and help you keep at it. If your goal is study-related, our guide to the best study planner apps can really help you with this.

What goals do you plan on setting for yourself in 2022? Share them with us on Twitter or Instagram. We’d love to know!