Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011—a fresh new year!  There have been so many wonderful blog posts written about New Year’s resolutions that I wanted to share a few along with some thoughts of my own.

For help on setting and achieving resolutions:

1.  Last year’s Ruly January on goal-setting.  (Quick summary here.)

2.  Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project wrote a helpful post with 5 Questions to Help you Make Effective New Year’s Resolutions.  My favorite is “Are you a ‘yes’ resolver or a ‘no’ resolver?”  Also, congrats to Ms. Rubin on the possible television comedy remake of her book The Happiness Project starring Kristin Davis!  I wrote in my review last year: “This book has numerous opportunities to be screamingly funny. . . “  It looks like someone else saw it that way too and may be giving it a new twist.

3.  Stever Robbins will give you a great list of tips for effective resolutions in addition to an invitation for a free future tele-seminar in exchange for filling out a brief survey form here.

4.  If you could use a few suggestions about what type of money resolutions you might make for 2011, Michelle Singletary wrote a great article for her “Color of Money” column for The Washington Post identifying her top 5 financial fibs.

A lot of people are focusing on short themes to guide them through 2011:

1.  Erin Doland, chief organizer of unclutterer.com has set an ambitious goal for herself:

“In 2011, I am becoming the queen of self-micromanagement. . . . I have vowed to plan out every single day, hour-by-hour, to help me achieve these resolutions. Each evening before bed, I will plan out the next day and make sure that I schedule time for all of my resolutions. After waking up the next morning, I will review the schedule, print it out, and follow it to the best of my abilities.”

–Erin Doland, “January 2011 resolutions and a plan of action“

2.  Martha Stewart archivist, Andrew Ritchie of the Martha Moments blog has chosen a Martha-appropriate theme for himself for 2011:

“My New Year’s resolution (personally and professionally) can pretty much be summed up in these three words: Expect Good Things. . . Expecting good things in life means having the desire to start each day with a positive outlook: ‘What will my good thing be today?’ If we ‘expect’ them, we are more likely to invite them in.”

–Andrew Ritchie, “Expect Good Things.”

3.  The Nesting Place wrote a very short but fun post with a video link (click through to watch):

“May your 2011 be a year where you try something new. Stir the expected in with the unexpected.”

–Nester, “And Then We’ll Do it Again.”

Other people just wrote general reflections and thoughts:

1.  Caitlin Shetterly, author of Passage West wrote a wonderful post about New Year’s reflections, including what she learned looking through the apartment window at her neighbor:

“Lately, as I do dishes, I’ve been watching a young woman in the apartment behind and below ours. She’s in her mid-twenties, I’d say. Her apartment is neat as a pin, with plants everywhere and brightly colored odds and ends, a nice stereo. Everything has its place. She has a little study, her books all tidily lined up. I often watch her lying on the couch reading. When I watch her it’s like I’m looking back in time to myself, only a few years past, but what feels like a lifetime ago.”

–Caitlin Shetterly, “#61: A New Year: The Same Me“

2.  Dave Walker at The Cartoon Blog, who always writes very funny church-related cartoons and posts, writes:

“I quite like thinking up New Year resolutions. The important thing is to not take them too seriously so that when you break them it doesn’t matter too much.”

–Dave Walker, “Happy New Year 2011“

3.  Monica Hesse wrote an amusing article for The Washington Post, naming all the people joining gyms as part of their 2011 fitness goals, “resolutionaries,” disrupting the routines of the regular gym members:

“[T]he resolutionary . . . hogs the 30-minute treadmill for two hours straight, not so much jogging as sauntering in inappropriate foot attire while loudly explaining last week’s “Big Love” episode to an unseen party on a cellphone.”

–Monica Hesse, “January at the Gym: The Attack of the Resolutionaries,”  The Washington Post, December 30, 2010.

I have not yet come up with a short theme for myself for 2011.  In fact, I am still working on defining my resolutions for the year.  I reviewed my 2010 resolutions recently and found that I had achieved approximately 30% of them.  Some of them are still good ideas to carry forward to this year.

When it comes to resolutions bear in mind 3 things:

1.  Don’t let fear of failure stop you from making a resolution. To me, the important thing about a resolution is not whether you achieve it or not but whether you still believe that you are capable of changing your life.  Making a resolution says that you are still excited about living, that you feel you still have valuable things to do and experience and that you will make an attempt to conquer things that make your life difficult.  Even if you fail in the attempt, you will learn something about yourself. I hope that I will always make grand resolutions.

2.  If there is a resolution you care dearly about achieving, think carefully about what you need to cut out of your life before you add one more obligation to it. For example, if you really want to fit in more exercise time, what are you going to cut out to make time for this?  For most of us, our lives are so full that what we can realistically cut comes down to 4 things:

• Sleep
• TV time
• Internet time
• Commuting/driving time

Some of the most ambitious exercisers I know cut sleep first.  Often they need to get their exercise in at the crack of dawn before anyone else is awake to burden them with requests for their time.  Sometimes you hear of writers getting up in the wee hours to focus on their writing for the same reason.

For me, sleep is a precious commodity that I will generally cut last.  In 2011 I will be focusing on cutting Internet time to achieve the goals on my list.

3.  Be honest about whether you want a quick fix or a long-term solution and draft your resolution to match.  For example, if organizing is your goal, what specifically bothers you about your current organization?  Maybe it is just one area.  It is fine to have a resolution to “Install shelves in the basement.” or  “Clean out the garage.” that you accomplish in a weekend.  Maybe it is something more long-term like:  “Perform my job with less stress.”  If a goal isn’t that important to you, think more about quick fixes.  If it is very important to you, think long-term.

What are your resolutions for 2011?  Please share in the comments.

P.S. Back tomorrow with the theme for January.