Now that the calendar has turned to 2025, are you celebrating the successful completion of your goals from last year? If the answer is “yes,” then bravo and kudos to you!

Unfortunately, if you are like most people, you may look back on your prior year goals and think, “What happened?”, “Why is this so hard?”, or “How could I have not moved forward?”

A year ago, you may have thought you had a perfectly reasonable goal in mind. You may have also given yourself a whole year to achieve it. And now, you may be a bit confused as to why it just didn’t snap into place. Well, the reason could be that while you may have had a goal in mind, and possibly even put it in writing (another important step), you may have neglected the most important part: an Implementation Plan.

In the financial planning world here at AFG, this is the “how you are going to get there” step in our process. We know that just doing a projection and giving someone a target retirement amount is not enough. The implementation plan we typically recommend may include maximizing annual 401k/403b contributions, additional savings each month, and other steps to help move you towards your financial savings goal.

What you may not realize is that this same concept applies to virtually any reasonable goal that you may want to achieve. Some people think that buying a treadmill is an implementation plan for starting an exercise routine. Then, weeks later, they realize that buying a piece of machinery wasn’t enough. 

In the book Atomic Habits (Clear, J. (2018) (pp. 70-71) Avery publishing) the author James Clear talks about the steps needed for a good implementation plan, or as he calls it, an “implementation intention”. He says “…people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out…Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the right time to make an improvement…Once an implementation intention has been sent, you don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike. Do I write a chapter today or not? Do I meditate this morning or at lunch? When the moment of action occurs, there is no need to make a decision. Simply follow your predetermined plan.”

There is one major difficulty with an implementation plan:

You may find a concrete plan is difficult to pull together. Sometimes there are just too many options on how to approach a habit you would like to change. In going back to our exercise example, let’s pretend that you may want to exercise more. Well, what does that mean? There is big difference between training for a marathon vs. simply going to the gym for 20 minutes a day. Do you find some friends to exercise with? Join a club? Should you exercise first thing in the morning or at night? Do you focus on free weights and machines, or just cardio? Do you need special shoes or reflective gear to run outdoors? 

I have a simple trick that may help you with the analysis-paralysis that comes with putting an implementation plan together. It may take some mental energy, but it will be worth it, as it will narrow down the list of possible approaches to the change you wish to make. 

You might think of it as the failure solution: Simply pretend that you are at your deadline for when you wanted to accomplish your goal or habit change, and you failed. If you can visualize failure, see if you can take it a step further. Try to then visualize what you would do next to make sure that if you were to try a second time, you would take very specific actions to make sure that you don’t fail.

For example, let’s assume you are carrying a balance on your credit cards and want to get them paid off in 3 months, but you don’t have a clear plan for doing it. Now imagine that April 1^st rolls around, and you have the exact same balances—or worse—even higher balances. Would that make you mad? If so, how would you fix it? Perhaps an austerity program? Perhaps making your own sandwich each day for lunch instead of eating out would be part of your plan? You could also cancel the weekend trip you were about to set up. You may have planned on replacing your car, which is still running well, but now you realize that you could wait a bit longer. These are all examples of what you would likely do on April 1^st if you failed to achieve your goal. However, instead of waiting for the months to pass, you can just implement your austerity program now. 

The example above is simple, but it can apply to almost any goal. As you start to list out all the things you would do differently if you knew in advance you were going to fail, you narrow down the details of a good implementation plan. The next step is to just put it into action. So, here’s to 2025, and a fresh chance of success at whatever it is that you endeavor to do. Happy New Year!

Kristina Bolhouse, CPA/PFS, CFP®

Vice President/Shareholder

© 2025 Kristina Bolhouse and The Arkansas Financial Group, Inc., All rights reserved.

The Arkansas Financial Group, Inc. is a Fee-Only Financial Planning Firm located in Little Rock, AR serving clients in Arkansas and throughout the country.

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