Making Appropriate New Year's Resolutions

Making resolutions, or setting new goals, can be done at any time. Certain "transition times", such as birthdays, the start of summer, a new school year, or retirement can be good times for resolutions and setting new goals, though they can be really done at any time. Of course the period around New Year's day is the traditional time for making new resolutions in our culture. I have a membership at a local fitness center, and those of us who are long time regulars there get a chuckle the first week in January which is always the busiest week of the year. We know that things will return to normal by the end of the month.

Finding appropriate New Year's resolutions can be a tricky thing. Ideally it should be something realistic that you can accomplish in the coming year. Consider an impressive grand goal, such as "develop a 2nd career that you can follow after you retire". That's a great goal, but one that involves many steps and spans many years. On the other extreme, consider one such as "cleaning out the basement". Another worthwhile goal, but it's something that takes much less than a year (hopefully). Neither of them are really ideal New Year's resolutions.

After giving this some thought, here are some New Year's resolutions I'm considering making. Note that I am writing these down in a public way, which helps to increase the odds that I will actually keep most of them.

Health - to enable a long active life:
- Jog at least 500 miles (something I've successfully done for the past 2 years)
- Make an appointment for a physical by January 15th
- Restrict coffee to normally at most one small cup a day

I considered "eating healthy" and "getting more sleep", but these seem too vague with no defined targets or plans to be useful resolutions in those forms.

Simplify / Unclutter My Life - allowing more focus on what's important:
- Start with the bedroom in January - remove anything not related to sleeping or dressing. Simplifying your life, not just rearranging things, can call for drastic changes ;-)
- Continue with one or more uncluttering projects per month.
- Unclutter my mind: Simplify, organize, and plan my schedule on an ongoing basis. Edit down my list of projects based on my major goals. Experiment with some new techniques to reduce and manage information overload. Learn and practice new approaches to become more patient.

Other Interests:- Become known nationally in the small but growing "Great Turning" community by participating in discussions, writing articles, giving presentations, writing in my Provocative Futures blog, and taking other initiatives.

Didn't I just say above that a goal of simplifying my life involved editing down (reducing) my list of things that I'm working on? Hmmm... not off to a great start, am I?