Welcome to the end of the first week in January, the week where more New Year’s resolutions are broken than any other. According a study conducted in 2002, 25% of New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week alone. Regular readers may recall similar results of people abandoning projects when we discussed strategies for staying motivated when passion fades. In that article we cited two studies – one that showed 80% of gym goers drop out within 8 weeks, and another which surveyed over 4 million blogs, and found a quarter were abandoned after only one post.
The good news is that the very act of resolving to do something increases the likelihood of succes – that same study found that, after 6 months, those who set a resolution were 10 times more likely to stick to their resolution than the non setters (46% versus 4%). That’s great news for many of my friends, who have publicly committed on their blogs to New Year’s resolution and goals. Over and over I see many of the same themes:
- New Year’s resolutions to get in shape
- New Year’s resolutions to eat better
- New Year’s resolutions to give up smoking
I have no doubt many of them will be successful. I’ve already discussed the importance of writing down goals, and absolutely believe that increases the likelihood of success. Having the support and social pressure from friends is another kick in the right direction. There’s one thing that has been missing from the discussions I’ve seen online however – how to balance these new resolutions with our prior commitments.
Committing to Change – When We’re Already Overcomitted
I believe a major cause of people failing to accomplish their resolutions is making these new commitments, without first giving up other commitments. Consider this – if we are already pressed for time for our current commitments, how will we squeeze in time for any of our new ones? Perhaps it is different for other people, but for me, I already have enough things I want to do. I have enough goals, so I don’t need new resolutions – but why not take this opportunity to sharpen my focus, and give up on a few things? Rather than taking on more, I will commit to doing less.
The simplest way I’ve found of letting go is a wonderful concept introduced in Getting Things Done (GTD), the @Someday list. Very briefly, the @Someday list is my list of items that I intend to get to “Someday.” Every week or two, I review the items on that list, and if I decide I am ready to begin a project that week, I move it from @Someday into my normal day-to-day GTD system.
I can hear the question now – if it’s on your @Someday list and it never gets done, what’s the point? The point is, if you don’t explicitly decide what is on your @Someday list, you implicitly put everything you aren’t actively working on on it. Do you have a dream of running a marathon? Starting your own business? Writing a book? If you don’t actively take action on it right now it’s easy to make excuses and continue to push it off into the nebulous future. Each week it’ll be something different, but the excuses will probably sound something like this – “Well, I need to first get my taxes squared away, and I want to make sure we have time to remodel the kitchen, and I really wanted to catch a movie this weekend…”. And then while those exact same things may not happen next week, you can be sure something will come up – because why should our later weeks be any less busy? What gives us the confidence to say that we’ll have less incoming in the future than we have today? If we don’t actively stifle the other commitments coming into our lives, we’ll become totally overwhelmed with all the inputs. We’ll continue to put things off, telling ourselves the timing just isn’t right, and we’ll get started on it right after we reach the next arbitrary milestone – this summer, when I’m out of school. Next year, after that promotion. I
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
- Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
My New Year’s Dissolutions
So, here is my shot at making this moment more ready for myself. Today I announce to you my New Year’s dissolutions.: Tasks that need to fall by the wayside, (or into the someday bucket), to make room for what I truly desire and enjoy, and want to accomplish immediately.
More is not better, and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it. Develop the habit of nonfinishing that which is boring or unproducitive if a boss isn’t demanding it.
- Tim Ferris, Four-Hour Work Week, page 88
Sid’s New Year Dissolutions
- Give up on reading some of the non-fiction books on my shelf. I have some half finished books that I feel I “should” read. No need to anymore. I’m letting those commitments go.
- Reduce professional metawork. I spent many hours these past few years listening to various software development podcasts (The Java Posse, Java Rant, Pragmatic Podcasts, Stack Overflow) and reading technical websites and blogs. The experts that produce this content are top notch, and I recommend every one of those podcasts. In my own life, however, many of the things I learned were never applied – yet I have a constant internal yearning to make sure I keep up. From here on out I’ll stay up to date as time permits, but if I miss a week, or two, or a month – it’s ok. I give myself permission to skip the podcasts and software development websites.
- Further reduce self inflicted junk mail. I’ve been pretty good about this, but there are still certain email lists I haven’t had the heart to unsubscribe from, and friends that I haven’t wanted to mark as spam.
- No longer keep up with new music. I love music. I used to go to over 50 concerts a year and have always enjoyed a variety of artists – folk, rock, rap, you name it. Lately though, it’s felt like work for me to keep up with all the new music out there - and I won’t try to anymore. I won’t know all the cool indie bands – and I’m ok with that.
- Leave items unread in Google Reader. I’ve often prided myself on how quickly I read and absorb RSS feeds. It’s time to separate out what’s productive however, and what I’m doing just out of a sense of responsibilit, entertainmenty and pride for completeness – I don’t need to read everything, everyday. I have already separated out the 5-10% of items that provide the most value to me, and have unsubscribed from various sites that provide less (Digg, TechCrunch, and Slashdot are among the more notable that I’ve stopped reading). As Tim Ferris notes in The Four-Hour Work Week if the news is that important, it’ll find it’s way to me (page 84) – and if it’s not, what’s the harm in not reading it? As an aside, I’ve been having some fun the past couple days – I read the most important couple of folders in my reader, and skim through most of the rest – when I get to the last 20-30%, I just mark all as read and skip them.
How about you – want to make a New Year’s dissolution?
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