Much like Jamie, I don’t “do” New Year’s resolutions.
From past experience, when I make resolutions and then screw up, I feel really bad about it. Then, since I’m “off the wagon”, I struggle to muster up the motivation to get back on the wagon and that’s all she wrote.
Instead of resolutions, last year I set myself some goals. Admittedly, I didn’t get terribly far in achieving those goals, but there were some positive outcomes from the discipline of attempting to achieve them; I also gained some insight from looking back at where I failed. In particular, I found that I’d set the bar a little high in terms of the number of things I was trying to achieve. I just didn’t have the time. I also found that the further I got through the year, the harder it was to motivate myself to keep trying; the numbers just felt too big.
As part of that process and insight gained, once again I’m setting myself some new goals for 2011. Less and smaller numbers this year, but I’m hanging onto the 52 & 12.