Think back to the beginning of the year. What were the New Year’s resolutions and goals you set? How many of those did you stick to?

There are many articles available on frameworks and processes for setting goals, but in this blog, I will share some tips on sticking to them. I will also share my own story on some challenges I faced in 2024 and how I overcame them. (As always, feel free to skip over my story and my examples and pull out the tips that are most relevant to you.)

Spoiler alert: There isn’t a magic or secret ingredient; it all begins with developing a continuous improvement mindset.

What is Continuous Improvement?

Continuous improvement is a business concept. It is a gradual, never-ending process of CHANGE. It is driven by competitiveness, focusing on eliminating waste in the form of people, materials, opportunities, and time. The ideal outcome is that products and services are created through less expensive, more efficient, and safer work.

However, the concept of continuous improvement can be applied to personal life. At its core, continuous improvement involves a periodic review of how you can be more effective… at whatever you do or want to do. Sure, continuous improvement involves a process and framework to follow, but first and foremost, it is a mindset and it’s about mastery.

My Story

The year 2024 was a year of growth for me in many ways. If you’ve been following and reading my blog for any length of time (and thank you if you’ve!), then you’re aware that my career has been centered on entrepreneurship and project management. My career as a project manager has been a lengthy journey, fraught with moments of pure joy and fulfillment as well as stress, remorse, embarrassment, and regret.

The Project Management Journey

Project management is a very challenging career for many reasons. However, despite the terrible, stressful, and overwhelming days when I lay awake in bed, wondering why I had chosen project management as a career path, and despite how many times I considered changing careers, I always stuck with it.

Despite its challenges, project management can be a highly rewarding and fulfilling career. However, it takes years and years of education, application, and experience to learn the different project management techniques, lifecycle approaches, and methodologies, and even problem-solving tactics. It also takes years for a project manager to develop their own style and feel confident in it, regardless of what stakeholders believe. It takes years to gain confidence to effectively manage a project… and the people involved. I’ve been there.

Developing an Always Learning Mindset

Although I have been a project manager for over 15 years, I still face unique challenges and problems to solve. I still find myself consulting the PMBOK Guides or taking courses through the Project Management Institute (PMI) to expand my knowledge and technical competencies.

Additionally, there is the emotional and mental side of project management. As someone who continuously struggles with overthinking and negative self-talk, I began telling myself every day that I am smart, a good project manager, and that I can do hard things. This was a habit I developed in 2024, and it gave me a confidence boost.

However, after years of experience, trial, error, patience, and persistence, I began recognizing my fallbacks and assumptions. Although I have a successful project track record under my belt, in some ways, I feel like I have just “gotten by”, I also recognized how these assumptions could cause project failure.

I made too many assumptions, specifically regarding the management and organization of proper communication with stakeholders. I assumed if I created a project schedule and shared it with project team members, they would understand how to read and follow it with little to no intervention from me. And my lack of assertiveness or pushiness allowed project schedules to slip.

As a result, I thought I was a bad PM. And, despite all my hard work, time, and money I spent earning and obtaining multiple certifications, I began to think that I had made a mistake and that I wasn’t cut out for this career. I thought I wasn’t assertive, aggressive, or pushy enough.

Sometimes, I was even assigned to manage and lead a project, but I struggled to understand the best project management lifecycle and approach. Although the project achieved a successful outcome, it didn’t proceed as smoothly as it could have.

Needless to say, I was ready to give up. I started exploring different career paths. I began studying business analysis and data analysis. As I took courses and learned about these disciplines, I realized not only that I enjoyed them but also that the core project management principles were deeply rooted in these disciplines. I realized that I enjoyed these new disciplines because project management was deeply rooted within them and supported them.

As a result, it gave me a renewed appreciation for project management. With my skills and knowledge in business analysis and data analysis, I began applying those new concepts to the areas where I felt I was weak in project management.

How did I go about this specifically? With two simple tools and just a few steps…

Transforming Goals into Gains

Whether you want to earn a promotion or lose 10 lbs, a goal is something you might write down or say out loud in passing. However, without a proven method to track progress, any goal becomes challenging to adhere to over time.

1. Mindset and Motivation

First and foremost, we must be motivated to set and achieve a goal or solve a problem for these tips to be effective.

Sometimes, a problem weighs us down and causes so much stress that our first response is to avoid it. Although it might alleviate some apprehension immediately, this state is only temporary. Procrastinating or avoiding it only inflates the problem. Avoiding conflict isn’t making peace with the problem or yourself. Not only are we exacerbating the problem, but we are also harming ourselves. We become our own worst enemies and roadblocks to success and true happiness.

Being motivated to solve a problem or make an improvement requires not just creativity, but also motivation. It requires working your way through your own personal challenges and learning to pivot along the way.

All in all, the simple concept of just being better at whatever it is you are trying to improve first requires the right mindset, motivation, and commitment. Be motivated by curiosity rather than recognition or status.

2. Understand the WHY

At its core, a goal is something you want to do or fix. It may be an attempt to address a weakness or a problem you’re trying to solve. To make an improvement, you first need to fully understand the WHY.

Learning to ask WHY is a helpful technique in various situations. Whether we are trying to solve a problem, make a decision, or better understand a concept or topic, we can accomplish all of the above by simply asking WHY.

Pain and Progress Example #1: Earning a Promotion

For example, if you want to earn a promotion, you first need to understand why you want a promotion. Perhaps it’s to earn more money, take on additional challenges or responsibilities, or advance to the next level in your career. Maybe you were previously passed over for a promotion, leaving you feeling resentful, bitter, angry, and maybe a bit embarrassed.

If your goal is to try again and ensure you earn that next promotion, you first need to take the time to understand why you were passed over previously. This might involve having difficult conversations with leadership or addressing some of your biggest weaknesses and insecurities, which is never easy. However, if you skip this step, you will continue to struggle with making progress towards achieving your goals.

Pain and Progress Example #2: Ditching the Pounds

As another example, if you want to lose 10 pounds, then you first need to understand what led you to gain weight in the first place. Maybe it was the holiday season. Maybe you have been so busy and stressed with work and home life, you stopped going to the gym and paying attention to what you eat and how much. Maybe you were grieving a loved one and fell into depression. Maybe your relationship with food and yourself goes deeper than that.

Again, regardless, you may need to have some difficult conversations with yourself or a nutritionist or physician to better understand what led to weight gain. Then, you can take the necessary steps to correct your thinking and make progress towards weight loss and a healthier, happier life.

3. Read

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz

In 2024, I published several blogs on the importance and value of reading. Developing a reading habit has numerous benefits. After all, reading is at the core of continuous improvement.

How can reading help you? Reading helps to expand your mind and knowledge on a particular topic, such as a weakness you may want to learn more about and how to improve it, as well as new ideas for doing so.

Additionally, reading relaxes and focuses your mind, which, in turn, helps to improve your performance in other areas of life and solve problems more effectively.

Finally, when reading to gain new knowledge or skills, you develop ideas for your “Plan” part of your continuous improvement plan. (More on that below…)

Julie’s Example

Several years ago, I set a goal to read more. I set a larger goal of reading 20 books per year. Then, I would break it down into a smaller goal of reading one to two books per month. And then further to read 10-20 pages per day. Not only have I successfully adhered to this goal over the last several years, but I also believe it has contributed to some noticeable key improvements in my personal and professional life, particularly in enhancing my sleep quality.

For example, I first noticed the improvement in my speech and vocabulary. A client or stakeholder would call me and ask a question. I would think for a moment and respond. Sometimes, I would surprise myself at how intelligently I answered the question. I would think, “Wow, did that really just come out of my mouth?”

In large part, this resulted from acknowledging my weaknesses, which is one of the principles I live and work by. By embracing my weaknesses and developing a reading habit that enables me to read about topics or areas where I want to improve, I have put the knowledge I’ve gained from this habit into practice and begun noticing improvements.

4. Follow Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)

A very common and straightforward continuous improvement methodology is what is known as Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

Plan – Identifying our goals and the areas we want to improve and planning out our ideas for those improvements.

Do – Identifying the specific actions we need to take to carry out our goals. This step is all about execution. In essence, it is doing the things we said we would do.

Check – What, when, and how we will check our progress. This step also involves checking to see if the action(s) are making an impact. If they aren’t, then we go back to the Plan and Do steps.

Act – If we are satisfied with our progress, and the “Do” actions are working and make sense, then we work on standardizing those processes.

5. Use a Goal-tracking Tool

Two notable tools helped me with habit tracking and goal tracking: Asana and Notion. Here’s how I used and integrated the two:

Notion = Used for writing out larger goals. I created a table for goals I wanted to achieve each year, quarter, and month (“Plan”). I also created a template journal where I wrote about my progress and what I learned each day (“Check”).

Asana = I use Asana as my daily task list. In my task list, I have the tasks I need to do for work, but I also added the tasks that I need to do each day, week, and month to make progress toward my goal (“Do” and “Act”).

Integrating my larger goals and breaking them down into small, “bite-sized” tasks to do daily or weekly was pivotal in seeing noticeable improvement immediately.

6. Develop a Baseline

You can’t very well make any improvement without first developing and understanding a baseline, or a starting point. After all, how would you know what an improvement looks like without understanding where you started?

Let’s revisit our weight loss example. Before setting a goal for losing a specific number of pounds, you first need to understand your current weight. Let’s say you step on the scale and you are 165 lbs. This is your baseline. A baseline is crucial for measuring progress toward any goal or improvement.

Julie’s Example

Going back to my story above and using myself as an example, I wanted to become a better project manager. To do this, I asked clients and stakeholders I’ve worked with what I do well and what I could do to improve. Admittedly, it wasn’t easy asking these questions because that voice deep down inside told me they would say I was a bad PM. I wrote down the three areas I needed to improve, set larger goals, and followed the PDCA framework.

For example, one specific area I wanted to improve as a project manager was to manage schedules better. That meant I had to be a bit more assertive and push for answers and information from stakeholders and ask questions. Of course, these were things I wasn’t good at or was even afraid of doing.

I created these tasks in Asana to repeat in my task list every day:

• Ask WHY
• Ask IS IT TRUE?
• Communicate a task due date, or target launch deadline to a stakeholder

Okay, don’t laugh… but seeing these three simple tasks appear in my task list in Asana on a daily basis helps keep them top of mind. At the end of each day, I would journal about my progress and the results I saw from completing these tasks.

Asana also recently released an AI summary functionality. So based on the tasks you mark “complete” in Asana each week, Asana will spit out an automated summary. I tried this, this week, and here’s what it said:

Based on the retrieved data, here’s a summary of your accomplishments this week:

Personal Development and Health:

You’ve maintained a consistent routine focused on personal growth and well-being. You’ve successfully woken up early each day, completed your daily reading goal, and maintained your exercise regimen. You’ve also been diligent about your dental care and staying hydrated.

Work and Project Management:

In your professional sphere, you’ve made significant strides in project management and communication. You’ve updated project timelines, reviewed and updated heat maps, and pushed for updates on various projects. You’ve also prepared meeting agendas and followed up on action items, demonstrating your commitment to effective team coordination.

Communication and Leadership:

You’ve focused on improving your communication skills by being clear and direct in your interactions, actively listening in meetings, and speaking up with questions or suggestions. You’ve also pushed back on certain issues when necessary, showing assertiveness in your role.

Overall, your week has been characterized by a balanced approach to personal development, professional growth, and effective project management, showcasing your commitment to both your individual goals and your team’s success.

Thanks, Asana!

It might seem silly, but it works. There’s something in the simplicity of this process that makes it truly effective.

Start Small, but Just Start

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” – Anonymous

Everything I wrote above might sound great in theory; however, progressing toward any type of improvement can be daunting and overwhelming. Instead, look at improvement as a voyage, a journey, and start small.

Psychological research has proven time and time again that accomplishing small, immediate tasks helps create and build momentum. We can then leverage that momentum to conquer larger tasks and problems or make even more progress toward our goals. So start by thinking about the little tasks you can do each day and then track your progress.

Additionally, taking smaller steps and putting your energy towards finding workarounds, even if they are just temporary, to solve a problem, can help maintain momentum and avoid burnout.

At the end of the day, the key is to JUST START. After all, according to author Paulo Savaget in his book The Four Workarounds, “when you start going somewhere, you’ll get somewhere.”

Try Again

As you begin developing new habits, changing your thinking patterns, and working to achieve your goals, you might fail. That’s okay. When you’re ready, try again. It could be tomorrow or in five years. Whatever it is, try again.