Have you made your New Year's resolutions yet? My advice: Don't bother.
Most New Year's resolutions seem to be driven
more by remorse than by determination... and they
are usually the same resolutions you had a year ago. Remember?
But I'm not arguing against self-improvement,
just for a more effective mechanism. The one I
like is year-end resolutions... or if you think
it's too late, how about an end-of-January
resolution. As any lawyer - or shrink - will
tell you, a commitment's not a commitment unless
it includes a deadline, not just a start time.
You could argue that a start time is all you can
set if your resolution is something like "stop
smoking" or "keep my desk clean." That's true -
and those are bad resolutions. That's why AA's
program, for example, focuses on one day at a
time; implicitly, the resolution there is "I will
go to bed tonight without having taken a
drink." That's a resolution you can keep, one day at a time....
My end-of-year resolution, for what it's worth,
was to clean up my
desk.
I have already achieved it, and with it a nice
sense of satisfaction going into the New Year.
PS : Yes, if I *did* have a New Year's resolution
it would be to blog for HuffPost more regularly!