I’ve never really made New Year’s resolutions in the past. I’m all for self improvement, and while I’ve made many resolutions over the years related to diet, exercise, personal finance, dental hygiene, etc. that match typical New Year’s resolutions, I never waited until the start of the new year to make them. My attitude has always been that if a change is important enough for me to make, I’ll make it as soon as I realize the change is necessary/beneficial. While the start of the year can be a good time to reflect on potential changes to make in your life, it’s not inherently better than any other times. For this reason, I’ve often bought into the stereotype that most New Year’s resolutions only last through January – if you need an arbitrary date to make a change, is the change really important enough for you to stick with it?
However this year it looks likely that I’ll be using the arbitrary date of January 1st (or maybe just the month of January, I’m not sure I’ll have my resolutions sorted out in SMART fashion in the next two days) to launch some resolutions. Luckily for me, it seems the stereotype is wrong and most resolutioners are at least partially successful.
There are two main factors motivating this for me. The first is that while in some ways 2018 was a big year for me (I got married!), in other ways it felt stagnant. I think this is mostly due to the fact that 2018 was the first year I wasn’t a student. And while I’ve picked jobs so far that lead to my day to day life being similar to when I was a student, I don’t have the overarching structure where my small, everyday progress is leading to a graduation/degree. Even though I have chances to learn every day, I don’t think I’ve done enough thinking about where I want that learning to take me – and if I don’t particularly care, I haven’t justified that to myself. The second factor is that my wife is in the middle of some fitness goals where she’s made inspiring progress. Seeing her progress is a good reminder that taking a structured approach to tackling goals is way more productive than the vague discipline I’ve been employing recently.
So while I am perhaps resolved to have a resolution or two for 2019, I have yet to figure out the specifics. The short term resolution I will make for now is that within the next two weeks I’ll determine what resolution(s) I want to make for 2019 and write about it in a follow up blog post.
Edit: I forgot a big part of why I don’t like new year’s resolutions, but now that we’re a week into January I’ve been reminded. Around the new year, resolutioners make the gym and produce section of the grocery store crowded and unpleasant. If they spread out the times that they decided to start their resolutions, this wouldn’t happen. Some anecdotal evidence against the article I linked above is that by the end of January, everything is always back to normal.
