New Year’s resolutions that last
Thursday’s Management Tip for Graphic Designers
What better way to start the New Year than talking about resolutions. It’s my fervent hope that 2008 will be better than 2007!
Like most people, I start off the year with a list of resolutions. I want to do many things in a year and typically, can’t wait to get started. Almost as soon as I do get started, however, I lose interest!
Inspiration comes in the strangest places
My cousin’s husband makes a resolution that he sticks to, year in and year out.
One year, he decided to quit smoking. First week of January, he was at work. He called my cousin during his lunch hour and he declared that he had quit smoking. She asks, surprised, “Really? When?” and he answered “About a half hour ago. I threw out my carton of cigarettes.” She of course, laughed and said “Umm, okay. Whatever you say.” Of course she thought that he wouldn’t last and would soon be smoking again. He didn’t.
I was intrigued: how did he do it?
How to create New Year’s resolutions you can stick to:
- Decide on what you want to accomplish in the coming year and commit to it
- Believe you can do it
- Visualize you doing it
- Plan how you are going to do it
- Set up your environment for success
- Write down your resolution and plan
- Tell someone (the more the better) about it
- Review and track your progress
- Give yourself a reward (and a pat on the back) for doing it
- If you fall off the wagon, get back on!
C O N C L U S I O N
My cousin’s husband always makes one resolution a year and works on that for the entire year. He made a decision. He knew he could do it, could taste it. There was no question about failure. He then planned how he would accomplish this. He threw out all his cigarettes right away and banned smoking in his condo. At a few milestones, he treated himself to music CDs. And then worked daily toward his goal. He did it.
I also wonder if some of the problems people have with New Year’s resolutions is that they aim too high, think it will be done quickly, and give up at the first set back.
I also think that he’s on to something: maybe we have too many goals… We should perhaps focus on only one per year…
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