New Year's Advice from NYT Bestseller Jon Acuff

If you’ve ever been a regular at the gym, you will have noticed the surge in attendance every January. Classes are full. Treadmills are occupied. Personal trainers are busy giving tips to novices. But by February, all of the once-eager newcomers will be gone. That’s because we’re good at setting New Year’s resolutions, but not very good at keeping them.

In his new book, FINISH: Give Yourself the Gift of Done, author Jon Acuff notes that 92% of all resolutions fail. That means only 8% of us succeed in keeping our goals for a better year! Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author—not to mention a speaker on our cruises—so we thought we’d share one of his favorite tips for making resolutions last. He calls it the 52 and 7 approach.

Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to spend the next 365 days doing __________,’ he suggests breaking the resolution into seven short-term goals of 52 days each. You set one goal to focus on for the next 52 days. Once you meet it, you simply repeat the process. “I can do anything for 52 days,” he once wrote. “I’ve had miserable jobs I survived longer than 52 days.”

The Psychology of Goalkeeping

Acuff came up with this version of a New Year’s Resolution after consistently forgetting or abandoning his after just a few weeks. According to Acuff, short-term goals are more achievable because they help you focus better. Psychologically, deciding to do something for the next seven weeks feels a lot more reasonable than trying to do it for 12 months straight.

At the same time, by setting a mini-goal and completing it 52 days later, not only are you going to feel accomplished and encouraged, you’re also giving yourself the flexibility to revise the next phase of the goal. Or, you can start a brand-new one. Complete this process seven times and you’ve kept a resolution all year long!

This July, we’re thrilled to have Jon joining us again on the Sandi Patty Forever Grateful Alaska Cruise. Book your cabin today and, by the time the ship departs Seattle, you may be able to tell Jon face-to-face that you’re in the middle of your third set of 52-day goals.

We pray that your 2018 is blessed with happiness and success in everything you set your hand to. “May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed,”—Psalm 20:4.