Like every December, I sat down last month to reflect on what I accomplished this year and plan for the next one. I’ve been doing this for almost three years now, and somehow I keep making the same mistakes—setting goals that are vague, out of my control, or impossible to sustain.

Over time, I’ve picked up a few things that actually help. We’re still at the beginning of the year, so it’s not too late to set or update your resolutions. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Make Your Goals Measurable

The biggest problem I’ve noticed when setting goals is making them too vague. This sounds obvious, but I’ve fallen into this trap several times. Even after my first year of trying, I still end up with at least one or two goals that I can’t actually measure.

Intangible goals are goals where you can’t track your progress—things like “get in shape” or “make more money.” You might ask, “Why is this such a problem?” Well, if you set an intangible goal, how are you going to know when you’ve achieved it? How do you stay motivated when you’re tired and don’t feel like putting in the work?

Tangible goals are better because they give us a clear finish line. We can see how much work is left, which helps us power through. And when we fall short, we can see exactly how far off we were, learn from it, and adjust next year.

A simple trick I use: take a vague goal and ask “what does done look like?” Then add a deadline. “Get in shape” becomes “run 5K without stopping”—and then “run 5K without stopping by April.”

But even a measurable goal can set you up for frustration if it depends on something you can’t control.

Focus on Input, Not Outcome

Another trap I fell into is tying goals to outcomes and assuming I have control over the result—which, most of the time, I don’t.

Say I set a goal like “get 1,000 stars on my open-source project.” I can do my best—write good code, document everything, share it on social media—but I don’t actually control whether people star it. If I fall short, does that mean I failed? Not really. I put in the work. The outcome just didn’t happen.

This kind of thinking is demoralizing. Instead of focusing on the output, it’s better to shift your attention to the input. Focus on doing the work, and the results will eventually come.

There’s another benefit to input-focused goals: they feel better day-to-day. When the goal is “write one post per month,” I can finish a post and feel good about it. When the goal is “double my traffic,” I’m constantly checking analytics and feeling anxious about something I can’t control.

At the end of the year, even if you don’t hit some ambitious outcome-based goal, you can still evaluate whether you put in the work. If you did, you can look at what to do differently next time.

Once you’re focused on input, the next question is: how do you keep showing up every day?

Set Low and High Targets

Something that’s helped me is setting both a low end and a high end for my goals. This is particularly useful when building a new habit.

Let’s say you want to read for 30 minutes every day. Instead of just setting that as your target, set a range: a low end of 5 minutes and a high end of 60 minutes.

This helps you keep showing up even when life gets in the way or you’re just not in the mood.

When we set goals, we’re usually excited and motivated—the goal is new and fresh. But we ignore the ups and downs of life that will inevitably get in the way. There’s something about breaking a streak that makes it hard to start again. Missing one day turns into two, then a week, then you’ve quietly abandoned the habit. But if you hit even your low end—5 minutes of reading, a 10-minute walk—you still showed up. The chain stays intact, and that matters more than it seems.

It also helps to track which end you hit each day. Over time, you’ll see patterns in your progress that can inform how you set goals in the future.

Conclusion

I’m still figuring this out. But these three ideas—making goals measurable, focusing on input over outcome, and setting ranges instead of fixed targets—have helped me fail less often. They all point to the same thing: set yourself up to succeed by removing ambiguity and staying in control of what you can actually control.

Let’s see how this year goes.