On Adjusting Resolutions

I've always had a sense of serenity at the turnover of the year.

The ritual in those last few minutes is rarely exactly the same. I might count down with clocks and my family in the living room; huddle on a hillside with friends to watch the fireworks; stare at an explosion-studded sky from a small bedroom window, or simply turn a book's last page only to notice the milestone as it passes. Still, in every scene runs a common thread: I think about the things I'd hoped to be twelve months prior, and find in that memory a renewed resolve for self-improvement.

Which is probably why you're reading this, right? There's a well of inspiration in the New Year that many of us draw from to set targets. More difficult to attain is that drive to follow through - the priorities of January are unfavourably matched against one's day-to-day concerns in June. I've tried a few different ways of goal-setting over the years - most successful! - and it's my hope that this year's approach has strategies anyone can find helpful. For your convenience, dear reader, it's presented in a numbered list!

1. Resolve several times

I made twenty resolutions last year, and achieved six. With twelve months of hindsight... those targets weren't quite scoped to fit the circumstances.

Framing things in a more rose-tinted lens, I managed to meet 500% more goals than the year before. I made new recipes for lunch, joined community events, wrote poetry and meditated, and in setting the one goal for myself might have missed all but one of those!

Setting more goals than you might meet can be difficult if you're an overachiever - not least, they can be overwhelming to approach at the start. It's for this reason that I started 2021 with just the one goal: a somewhat counterintuitive approach, but one which makes sense in the context of the following section.

2. Reduce your deadlines

Sometimes the enemy of progress is the time you're given for the task. It's no particular indication of character: there are times that responsibilities build up, or mental reserves wear down, and everything that needs doing is pushed until the day before the deadline. It's difficult to predict what could change your priorities in a year - that lesson's been imparted well enough - but we can find some measure of certainty by reducing that timeframe.

One of my shorter New Year's resolutions was to catch up on a podcast my sister couldn't stop talking about (it's fairly helpful to be able to hold the other side of a conversation). It's a nice, simple kind of goal to set, but rather than commit to following every single update I set a hard limit of 5 episodes, to find out whether I like the show well enough to hear more. All in all, pretty easy to do in a week or two!

What should one do with the remaining months, then? I decided this year to spread out my resolution-making, adding a new target at the start of each month. My goal for February is to practice published writing more (to which I hope this article makes an auspicious start). In this kind of structure, I can set goals with a variety of durations: my goal in February could be completed at any time in the eleven months, while my goal in December might be smaller in scope.

Now, you might have noticed another contradiction here (the last one, I promise). If you're allowing eleven months to complete a goal, what stops you having a rush of last-minute attempts in December?

The immediate answer is that any of these suggestions could be made on their own: if you only followed this one, you might prefer to set yourself a series of month-long goals. For the purposes of my approach, the contradiction resolved itself as follows.

3. Replace the dead weight

We can choose a new direction to take ourselves every year, but why limit it to then? Let's say the hobby you committed yourself to was less rewarding (or practical) than you thought, but still looms as a spectre of obligation until next January. You could give up, and find something else next year if the mood takes you. I personally would prefer to channel that first enthusiasm into something else: I might not be doing as was expected at the start of the year, but I'll always be doing something.

Plans I had to go abroad or hit the gym weren't plans I could responsibly follow last year, and it's still hard to tell what the future holds. To adapt, this year I'm taking stock of the goals I've set each month: I might not always want to start them straight away, but if I haven't made some amount of progress in the month then they're off the list, shelved until next year and replaced with something I can get done.

Take writing, for example: if it's something I want to achieve this year, I'll have to make some progress by the end of the month or admit that there are things I could more enthusiastically be doing. On which note, if you don't see me next month have a wonderful year: you might want to take this next section to heart.

4. Remember to celebrate

I've got a lot that I'm hopeful about this year. Vaccination programs, imminent reunions, climate commitments: a lot of things in the world have already started to change for the better, and changes we make for ourselves are a bonus. Whether you're shooting for the moon, or for an asteroid shower of manageable targets, it's always worth making time to appreciate those milestones passed along the way.