The data suggest that if you made some resolutions at the start of 2017, the majority of those resolutions have already probably gone by the wayside. I don’t think those experts, though, are talking about cattlemen. When we slip up on our resolutions, we rarely wait a full year to start over. In the cattle industry, we make new resolutions on Jan. 2, Jan. 3 and every day going forward. That is how we are wired.

Resolutions are always fragile. What we are really talking about is setting and achieving goals. Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of science looking at how to achieve goals. What is surprising is that we tend not to implement that science. Kinda sounds like New Year’s resolutions, doesn’t it?

The experts tell us to go big when setting goals. Goals should stretch you and push your performance. Little goals don’t inspire and drive change. They also tell us to narrow our focus. Like the book One Big Thing, we just need to narrow our focus to what is truly important.

The third step has been promoted for a long time, but still gets widely ignored. Write your goals down. Once you identify your objectives and a plan to get there, you have to set some metrics to manage your process. Finally, it is important to create accountability to the process of achieving our goals. And then, you just need to get started.

Personally, the hardest part of those key drivers is narrowing my focus to the truly important. There are so many important things that need to be addressed that it is increasingly difficult to narrow my focus to the degree that is required to make significant headway.