One of the reasons that I do not subscribe to the New Years resolution mentality is that I know it rarely works.  I have mentioned before that if you have to wait until a new year to start on whatever journey you plan on embarking than the burning desire just isn’t there.  I have written before about how willpower alone just doesn’t cut it.  Willpower is finite. For the people who regularly go to a gym, what they see every year is a spike in treadmill usage and other cardio equipment for the first few weeks in January.  And then gradually those people start dropping like flies because “real life” gets in the way.

Lack of defining clear, actionable goals is a major contributor to this problem.  Nobody really knows what lose weight actually means.  Most probably mean lose fat.  Other people’s goals are just too epic, like trying to lose 150 lbs in 3 months or something.  Aside from the fact that weight is not a good indicator of fat loss, large goals are hard to achieve with a high failure rate.  Small goals and small decisions, however, are much easier to achieve.  Eat an elephant one bite at a time.  150lbs can be broken down to walking 10 minutes a day for a week.  That is a much easier goal to achieve.

Every small decision achieved is a small victory.  Celebrate the small victories with a fist pump so that they motivate you to continue.  Perhaps you can try to challenge yourself with a slightly harder goal.  That’s eating the elephant.  I’m not a fan of long term projections, goals, and planning, although for some reason or other they like teaching it in business schools.  The projections are almost always wayyyy off and suck but business people like looking at them.  Mind boggles.  Every inaccurate variable compounds over a longer period of time so if you are off a little at the beginning the longer the goal the more off you’ll be.  Don’t worry, unless you are writing a business plan to investors or something then you do not need to be this silly.  Start small and celebrate small.

I’ve reclaimed my inbox and gotten to inbox zero, something Merlin Mann talks about to take control of email overload. Fist pump!  Its nice having gmail say “No new mail!” .  On the flip side my goal of writing 500 words per day for 2 weeks straight failed immediately.  You ever say something and regret it as you were saying it?  Yea that was me with this one.  My best friends have kept me busy and I don’t spend nearly as much time with them as I’d like so I didn’t get to do as much writing as I wanted, among other things.  Also, there is no burning desire so the goal had the odds stacked against it from the beginning.  I have begun to write more, which was the initial jump start I was looking for, so I am satisfied about that.  Now its time to get back into the swing of things (I am currently recovering from the sore throat from hell)!  I should probably start small and work my way up.