New Year, New Goals! What dreams are you chasing in 2024?

Every December I watch the same beautiful ritual play out — and I’ve been guilty of it myself. We sit down, full of hope and a little fizz, and we write down who we’re going to become next year. Fitter. Richer. Calmer. More present. Then January arrives like a starter pistol, and by mid-February most of those declarations are gathering dust next to the gym membership.

In the video above I talk about that magical reflective season — the part where we dream. This page is about the part nobody films: what happens to those dreams once the fireworks fade.

The honest reason resolutions fail

It isn’t lack of information. You already know how to lose weight, save money, or call your parents more often. You knew last year too. The gap was never in knowing — it’s in doing. That’s the single idea the whole book is built on: the challenge is rarely identifying what needs to change; it’s implementing it on the ordinary Tuesday when no one’s watching.

New Year’s energy is the easiest fuel in the world to burn. It’s also the easiest to neglect.

What’s effortless to do is just as effortless to not do.

A resolution made on adrenaline is effortless to write. And precisely because it cost nothing, it’s effortless to abandon the moment the adrenaline drains. That’s why “I’ll go to the gym every day” dies and “I’ll change into my running shoes after I park” survives — one is a wish, the other is a small piece of engineering.

Interest gets you to January 1st. Commitment gets you to December.

Here’s the distinction I keep coming back to. Interest is fleeting — it shows up when you’re rested, inspired, and the weather’s nice. Commitment is what carries you on the low-motivation days, which is most of them. A 2024 goal worth chasing has to be designed for the bad days, not the good ones. If it only works when you feel like it, it isn’t a goal — it’s a mood.

So when you sit with the video’s question — what dreams are you chasing this year? — push it one layer deeper. Don’t ask what you want. Ask what you’re willing to keep doing when you don’t want to.

Don’t dream in one sphere

Most resolutions cluster in one or two corners of life — usually the physical (lose weight) and finances (save more). But you are not a single-issue project. The book maps change across eight spheres: business, finances, relationships, the physical, the mental, the spiritual, family, and lifestyle. A “new you” built only on a flatter stomach will wobble, because the mental, relational, and spiritual scaffolding never got touched.

This year, run a quick audit instead of a wish-list. Score each of the eight spheres out of ten as they stand today. The lowest two numbers are usually shouting louder than the goal you were about to set. Chase those.

Make it real, not aspirational

There’s an old, genuinely useful test for a goal worth keeping — the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), first laid out by George T. Doran back in 1981. It’s not magic; it just forces a vague dream to become something you can actually do and verify. “Get healthy” fails every letter. “Walk 8,000 steps before lunch, five days a week, through March” passes most of them.

But I’d add one thing SMART leaves out: the effort-to-effortless path. Every meaningful change starts effortful and, through repetition, becomes effortless — that’s the whole arc. Your job in January isn’t to be disciplined for a year. It’s to do the hard, deliberate version often enough that it sinks below conscious effort and becomes simply who you are. You’re not chasing the result. You’re building the default.

What to do this week

Before the year turns, try this:

• Pick one sphere, not five. Compounding beats spreading. One real change ripples.
• Shrink the first rep until it’s almost embarrassing. Two minutes. One page. One call. Small enough that motivation is irrelevant.
• Name the bad-day version. What does this goal look like when you’re tired, busy, and uninspired? Design that, because that’s the version you’ll actually live.
• Make it visible. A tracker on the wall, a streak on your phone — anything that turns an invisible intention into something you can’t pretend you forgot.

If you want the trackers and frameworks I actually use to do this — including the sphere audit — they’re in the free resources, and the full blueprint is in the book.

Dream big on New Year’s Eve. By all means. But on January 2nd, do the small, unglamorous thing — and then do it again. That’s the dream that actually arrives.