New Year's Eve resolutions get SMART

If you didn't go to the gym this week, if you bought a pack of smokes or checked your ex's Facebook page when you said you wouldn't, you may need to adjust your expectations.

Martin Daly, an associate lecturer at Western Sydney University who contributes to the psychological understanding of motivation, recommends people take the SMART approach to goal setting.

That is, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

"A key problem with maintaining new year resolutions is that when we're passionate about making a change in their lives, people often set grandiose, ambitious goals for themselves," he said.

"The determination we feel towards making improvements in our lives while reflecting over a glass of bubbly on New Year's Eve drops away after a couple of weeks being back on the treadmill of managing work, family, friends, health and finances.

"Keep things realistic by making sure your goals are achievable.

"In the long term, you will feel better if you achieve a small goal than you will if you fail to achieve a larger goal."

Meaningful change is about achieving goals in realistic and manageable ways; this includes creating a series of small milestones, which give us a sense of progress and creating specific outcomes as opposed to broad outlines.

"Instead of saying 'sometime this year I will work on improving my fitness', set a timetable for yourself that gives you deadlines by which you aim to achieve milestones towards you goal," Dr Daly said.

Counting and recording progress — calories, cigarettes or compliments — has shown helpful in keeping our resolutions.

"Collecting data not only tells you if you are achieving your goals, it also helps to maintain your motivation by reminding you of what you are trying to achieve."

Writing things down also helps "remind yourself every day what you are trying to achieve and why it is important to you".