I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Never have. I’ve never understood the purpose behind deciding on 1 day to do (or not do) things that should probably be resolved all year (all life?) long. Need more exercise? Why wait until 1/1 to start? Need to eat better? Save more? Stop being a douche? Stop drinking so much? Stop taking drugs? Be nicer to people (these seem to be the common resolutions.) So WHY are you waiting? Plus from what I’ve seen and heard – most people ditch that list by mid-January. Why annual gym memberships are a great business for the gyms…
My new year’s list is more a “things to do” list. If you know me, you know I always one of these. Almost every day starts out with my daily list – my daily battleplan to attack the day. And my things to do list is always a live list. Always stuff to be done, always doing stuff, always more stuff that comes up and has to go on the list. That could almost be a George Carlin routine if you added some curse words.
You could apply my same “why are you waiting?” to this as well. But again, if you know me at all, you know I am *always* doing stuff :) But there are projects I either newly thought of or never really put on the list but I want off the damn list and this will ensure they get done!
Another section of my list is the “things to always make sure are done” section. This section isn’t the obvious junk like house cleaned, bills paid, dry cleaning dropped off/picked up, etc etc. since that list is always running in my head on a permanent loop. No, it’s things like:
take time to read every day if even just for 15-20 minutes.
brush the huskies a little each day so they don’t hate you for 1 BIG brushing session :)
sit down and relax – stop running, running, running and not enjoying.
exercise every day.
spend time with my friends doing fun things – plan them!
look at what you have and not what you don’t. And enjoy it. (this will however not make me not shop!)
I need to keep this list in a place I can see it all the time. Because they are important things to remember and to do. I’ve been *pretty* good on most them all last year but want more of #5 and probably need to work more on #3. I definitely need to concentrate on putting more of an effort into relaxing a bit more…hey…that doesn’t sound so relaxing! ;)
7:45 pm on January 2nd, 2010
So true!! I say the same thing when someone asks “did you make any new years resolutions?” I say “why wait? if you know something needs to change, don’t wait until the end of the year!”
12:16 am on January 3rd, 2010
i am good at To Do lists at work. i always get them done even if it takes more than a day to do it! i even check them off when i do them, some of my list items have sub-tasks and i check those off too before checkin off it’s parent. haha! for some reason, i never thought to do a To Do list for personal/home activities. i should try that. starting with ‘read 15-20 mins a day’ – if i did that i wouldn’t have such a pile of unread books sitting at my night stand. :)
12:13 pm on January 5th, 2010
We make lists because psychologically we have convinced ourselves that the turn of the calendar wipes the proverbial slate clean. If I got a $1 for each time someone said they were going to quit this or start doing more of that and actually achieved the goal, I would have $1.
I like the idea of following a list – it’s sort of like those HR objectives that you have to do – makes it somewhat easier to follow through, I think. Now if I could only motivate myself to see what’s in those boxes in the corner…
8:14 pm on January 5th, 2010
Hmm…I’ve never had that mindset. A new year on the calendar was just that – a new year on the calendar. But then I consider saying 10 Hail Marys in confession and having your sins absolved just like that kinda sorta not quite true either :)
I love my TODO lists!! :) They organize thoughts much better and you will find you get more done (unless you spend all day writing the list!)
12:32 am on January 6th, 2010
I totally agree – I think resolutions set you up for failure and as a result, giving up on whatever it is you resolved to do. Any day is as good as another to embark upon a goal. I need to make more to do lists…to sit quietly and go through my day since I’m more apt to just dive in and quickly get scattered into a zillion places…accomplishing far less in the long run.