12 Jan
New Years Resomalutions
I wanted to wait over a week before I brought this up. By now I am sure most people have forgotten their resolutions or just moved on because they were unrealistic. Also because of the massive failure rate in resolutions people become jaded. A friend of mine who shall be nameless (*cough*Eamon*cough*) has gone so far as to say his resolutions is to have no resolutions.
As David Klemke already wrote over on his blog people use New Year Resolutions as dreams. That’s a good way of putting it. The majority of my friends resolutions boil down to the usual few, Cut back on drinking, play less games, lose weight, get fit, etc, etc.
They are great ideas in theory but in practice they are so nebulous that trying to achieve them is nigh impossible. Not only because you don’t have a plan but because you don’t have a goal! Cut back on drinking, as in what? Once a day, a week, an hour? What?
To achieve in a resolution you need a defined goal then you need to construct the required steps to achieve that goal. If it is lose weight, how much? So you are 100kg with 25% body fat, create a target, say 90kg and 17% and then define down how you are to go about achieving it.
New Year’s Resolutions have gone out of fashion and a lot of people make the comment of why bother making them only on New Years? Well it’s a good enough time, you might as well. Set a goal, set what you need to achieve it, track your progress and then get it done.
I tackled this problem myself like a geek. I built a spreadsheet of what I wanted to achieve each day and defined down a point system for this. At a glance I can see what I achieved on any given day and what I should achieve to feel good about myself. I am currently trying to clean it up as a few people have expressed interest in it.
It’s now 12 days after New Years. It’s no longer a New year’s Resolution, it’s a life resolution. Make one, see what happens.
Posted by Eamon on 12.01.10 at 1:14 pm
Hey mine *was* a life resolution. I’ve been achieving it every year since 2004.
Anyway, my extremely useful and timeless advice is this: If you have trouble with achievement then you’re better off acknowledging that you’re a lazy bastard and no amount of technology or organisation will be able to save you from yourself. Change your thinking and you’ll change your behaviour. Do something that helps you to acknowledge the imminence of your death and you’ll find all the motivation you need, or you’ll die and it won’t matter.
Hope that helps!
Eamon
Posted by Amy on 12.01.10 at 1:14 pm
Mine weren’t really a list of resolutions (they’re here: http://thysanotus.livejournal.com/400527.html if you’re interested).
A few months ago, I realised we do performance reviews at work, but we don’t really do them on the rest of our lives. So I thought I might do one, and focus on some areas that I’d like to improve on in the coming months. Actually, so far, it hasn’t been going too badly.
I think the prospect of forcing myself to review them every month and be honest with myself about whether or not I’ve achieved the goal to my satisfaction has definitely helped – although I am definitely finding some of them too nebulous. Hm. Perhaps this warrants a re-define at my next review period :)
Posted by chris on 12.01.10 at 1:14 pm
My resolution is to get online in a more proactive way. Looking at this post form and having the “website” field blank has to change. I talked about it last year but it just never happened for various reasons. Now to write some clear steps as you suggest..
Posted by Amy on 12.01.10 at 1:14 pm
This is also another excellent post on reviewing your life: http://teaandcookies.blogspot.com/2010/01/being-intentional.html
It has some very interesting links in it! (Just found it today and thought of you).
Posted by David on 12.01.10 at 1:14 pm
@Eamon I would argue that acknowledging you are lazy is helpful. I would be the first to admit I am lazy, you know this. but acknowledging this fact does not really help me. What does help me is defined goals and positivie and negative reinforcement. Organisation and techonology are what achieve this, not me saying I am lazy. Also the imminence of death does not do you any long term help. If I had cancer or a degenerative disease I had to live with everyday then yes, I would find plently of motivation. However since I don’t, I do not face my mortality everyday so something else needs to take its place.
@Amy I really like your idea of a quarterly review. I think that is such a good idea, your right.. we do it for our professional we should have the same thing for our private. Your goals are also way more defined than mine, a lot more thought has gone into them. Cheers for the link as well, I really liked the idea of a book as week… something to think of
@Chris What kind of website are you thinking? A design portfolio site or more of a blog site? Something else entirely?