Analytical Mind

A Microresolution is an Explicit and Measurable Action

A microresolution is focused on doing, not being. A microresolution is an explicit action whose success can be measured today, not an aspiration to achieve a result sometime in the future. Resolutions such as “to exercise more” or “to snack less” are worthless—“more” and “less” are relative judgments that can’t be precisely measured and require that you tabulate your behavior (at the end of the day? at the end of the week?) in order to assess if it was “more” or “less.” Resolutions to do something “once a week” or “once a day” are also too slippery to meet rule 2. For example, if you resolve to handle personal administrative workonce a week without specifying the day, you won’t be able to measure your success until the week has ended, and all week long your undone resolution will loom over you, portending failure. And if you do fail to make time for your session, it will be difficult to see exactly what went wrong, since any day might have been the day.

A microresolution is an absolute commitment whose success is easily and immediately measurable. For example, if your target is greater fitness, an explicit and measurable action would be to ride my bike to work every Wednesday. The action is clear, the timing explicit, and it will be obvious in real-time whether or not you’ve kept your resolution. By being absolute, you’ll avoid the demoralizing self-bargaining that so often leads to resolution failure—swapping today for tomorrow and tomorrow for the weekend until you’ve bargained yourself out of your resolution all together. If your resolution requires a schedule, don’t keep yourself guessing, Will I or won’t I today? Settle on a day and time and stick to it.

Some microresolutions adhere to a schedule, but others require that you identify a cue to act as a trigger for your commitment. If your goal is to be less defensive when receiving feedback at work, you won’t be able to schedule the action of your microresolution (i.e., your non-defensive response); instead, you’ll need to process and respond to a cue that fires in a specific circumstance. If you’re defensive when a co-worker asks you about a pending request, testy when a subordinate points out that the team’s priorities are less than clear, stricken when your boss gives you developmental feedback, trying to solve for all these circumstances in one go will only set you up for failure. Pick one specific circumstance, isolate the cue, and create a microresolution that will allow you respond with grace.

For example, you might resolve when cued by formal feedback to respond, “you’ve given me a lot to think about, I appreciate getting your perspective.” Such a response keeps you from defending yourself (or explaining, which is usually the same thing), buys you some time to consider the feedback before responding, and sends the signal that you’re open to mentoring and self-improvement (critical to professional advancement). The more explicit your microresolution and precise its cue, the easier it will be to measure success, identify obstacles, and fine-tune your commitment for greater effectiveness.

If you’ve been a chronic resolution breaker, making an absolute commitment might worry you. You might think that the more explicit your resolution, the more likely you are to fail; in fact, the opposite is true. Returning to the “bike ride to work” example, a commitment to ride to work on Wednesdays establishes a clear benchmark, freeing you from anxiety-provoking decisions and deferrals. Likewise, if you resolve to take care of personal administrative work on Tuesday nights after dinner, when you see items collecting in the in-basket, you won’t fret about losing track because you’re absolutely committed to taking care of it on Tuesday. When the moment to keep your resolution is simply right here, right now, you’re much more likely to manage obstacles out of your way than if you tell yourself that tomorrow is as good as today. Part of the magic of a microresolution is that you end up looking for solutions, not excuses. And if you feel like riding your bike on additional mornings, go ahead—a microresolution doesn’t limit what you are allowed to do, only what gets measured as success.

Take some time now to shape your microresolution into an explicit and measurable action with a precise cue, and then you’ll be ready for Lesson 7 and rule number three.

Until next time,

Caroline