(Last edited March 3, 2008)

First of all, before I begin my blog, I have discovered that my blog has been included in Sammy McLoughlin’s Palm Addicts 2006 Reader Awards under the “Best Palm blog” category! I am extremely honored, being such a new blog and all, to even be included amongst all the big heavyweights like MobileRead, Treonauts, Tam Hanna, PalmInsider, GadgetFetish, Writing On Your Palm, PalmSolo’s Life With PDA’s, TreoToday, and PalmOSC. I know that there’s no way I can even compare with these guys but I’m very honored to be in such great company. I hope that some of you will take a moment or two to give my blog a vote. Thanks in advance! Wow! Thanks again, to Sam McLoughlin for giving me so much exposure via his blog. I’m sure that I wouldn’t be getting the hits if I didn’t get the help from Sammy and the guys at PA. Thanks again, Sammy!

My New Years Resolution: Slow down and take things easy

After saying all that, I am finding that even just posting every other day is taking quite a toll on me. After 70 lengthy posts over 3 months, I’m starting to feel it. The amount of time I spend in preparing the blog is taking a lot more than I originally expected. Trying to find a topic to discuss, doing the research and finding the links, creating the simulations, testing out some of the programs and composing my post are taking up the bulk of my time. I tend to edit and add more stuff to my older postings, so there’s a lot of time spent on the blog that many of you are probably not aware of. I really love writing and doing the blog and my goal is to continue doing this for a long time. I keep forgetting that this blog was really my way to express the love for the Palm device and got distracted by feeling that I need to push the blog out daily, or every other day. So, I am now going to really take it easy. Hopefully I will get into a regular pattern that I feel comfortable with and stick with it for the long term.

I’m glad that I’m getting a number of subscribers either via the email subscriptions or the newsfeeds. I do try to post (in case anyone is aware of this) nowadays on Mondays (edited May21st) around from the 8am - 11am Pacific Standard Time (-8 GMT). I will try to keep this schedule. Again, the best way is to be notified when I have new material out is to just subscribe to my blog either by adding the newsfeed or by subscribing to the email via Feedblitz. Sorry if this causes any inconvenience. I guess in some way, one of my New Years Resolution is to take it easy, especially in regards to my blog, posting at a slower pace. Okay, back to the blog.

This posting, is another one in which I am somewhat straying from the topic of Palm, but still somewhat related to organization. From time to time, I will likely be discussing something that isn’t directly related to Palm (gosh, it would get extremely boring to keep talking about it all the time) so that I can spend more time preparing for the Palm postings. So, I hope you guys enjoy this posting.

Well it’s mid month already but hopefully still not too late to come with my posting on New Years Resolutions. (Well, it’s still January). After you’ve read all the other New Years Resolution blogs and ideas, I’m tossing my own in the ring.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The beginning of a new year. A new start. Most of us are so used to the yearly “New Years Resolution“. We hear about it. Our friends ask us about it. We feel compelled to make one just so that we “have” one and look like we’re trying to improve ourselves.

All that sounds great and I’m glad to hear that many people are making an attempt at a goal, but what usually happens is that sometime later in the year, the resolution is dropped. Why? Maybe the resolution was too hard to attain. Maybe we didn’t work hard enough. Maybe we didn’t outline the necessary steps to work towards that resolution. Maybe we never really believed that we can do it since every year, we come up with a list but none of them ever get done. Do these sound familiar? Maybe just like what I’ve discussed in my Procrastination series, we are “used to” not getting our resolutions done and thus, we usually don’t try to do much more than make our list and have our resolutions every year only to drop it sometime later.

Why have a New Years Resolution?

Why do we even have a New Years Resolution? Well in the point of view of the retail industry, this will be another way for them to “sell” you something, especially at a time of the year when business drops off. This will hopefully be enough to help them during the slowest time (when everyone has spent all their money on Christmas and New Year). Usually business picks up in March. That’s why everybody is selling those “New Year Resolutions” theme: get a fitness membership, lose weight, get a new Day-Timer or Franklin-Covey paper planner organizer, etc. We see advertising everywhere: on buses, subways, flyers, TV commercials, magazines, etc. After being “brainwashed” by all the advertising we are exposed to as well as hearing everyone else who talks about it, we usually succumb to it and make our resolution. We go out and spend more money (get us in more debt) by buying our gym memberships, etc just so that it’s “done“, in that sense, even if we never really even try to go in the gym or use whatever service or product we spent the money on. What a waste of money. But unfortunately, this “vicious cycle” happens every year and we get conned into spending money to make our resolution. Although the majority of us know that nothing comes out of it and we’re aware of what we’re doing (or not doing), we fail to stop this nonsense.

Okay. Before I continue on, let’s start to try to understand why we set our yearly resolutions.

Our main goal for setting up a yearly resolution is really, very much like in life, to improve ourselves. If we really take a good look about yearly resolutions, it’s really a small target or goal that we try to set each year in hopes of self improvement. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals in life, including yearly resolutions, but unfortunately, our approach is flawed or could be improved upon. Resolution, by definition is “resolving to do something” or “the state or quality of being resolute; firm determination“. So, it’s really a a firm goal to be achieved over a year, but unfortunately, we are not resolute or determined enough so even that idea could be improved upon.

If we are successful each year of meeting and making our resolution, we are one step closer to becoming better people, or attaining our goal of whatever direction we hope to achieve. That is what yearly resolutions are really supposed to be: a yearly goal that will help us go into a specific direction in life, hopefully the right direction. But unfortunately, what usually happens is that we give up half way or even earlier and next year, we end up making a similar resolution, which we don’t make and the vicious cycle keeps happening. The years go by and by now, we’re used to making the same resolution, knowing full well that history will repeat itself and we never end up with a different outcome. Had we been successful in achieving the desired result and made our resolution, we may be making different ones each year and working towards some goal that we may reach, however remote and hard to attain it may originally seem.

All right. Enough about discussing about resolutions and how we tend to just make them and have us fail at it each year, let’s discuss how we can try to make one that we can achieve and look back at the end of this year (or earlier) and be proud to say that “we did it“!

Again, I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject and most of my ideas are just that, my ideas. If you find that they help, that’s great. If not, well, I did warn you that these are just “ideas”.

Ten steps to help you keep your resolutions and make it

1 - Don’t come up with a difficult or very hard resolution

2 - Be very specific about your goal.

3 - Break down your goal into many mini and simple goals

4 - Create a time line or systematic schedule that shows a natural progression of what you’ve done in #3

5 - Document your goal somewhere where it’s visibly seen daily

6 - Keep a daily running progress report documented somewhere

7 - Check up on your progress daily either by looking at the documented daily report and ensuring that you’re on the right track

8 - Tweak your strategy as you go along

9 - Keep rewarding yourself to stay on track and maintain your focus

10 - Keep everything documented and organized in one area

1 - Don’t come up with a difficult or very hard resolution. Let’s face it. Our goal is to make a resolution (or resolutions) that are achievable. Making a resolution that isn’t very possible or easy to attain can guarantee that you’ll never make it. Our goal really is to try to improve ourselves, so that we are a better person, so let’s just say, for this first year, to make something that can be easily achieved and attainable, so that we can at least make ourselves feel better, get that “good” feeling going so that our brain recognizes that we can be successful and think positively. Then, the next year, we can build upon that success with something a little less easy since we’ve gained that experience and the confidence. It’s amazing how things work so well or go “your way” when you have a positive attitude. Strange how we tend to want to do things we’re “good” at.

So, rather than making a hard resolution like stop drinking completely when you are a heavy drinker or love drinking, you should try to change it so that it’s somewhat less stringent and easier to attain. So, an example for the same situation would be to change it so that you are drinking less and cutting down on how much you drink, rather than quitting cold turkey. So, you may want to specify a certain amount of beers or glasses of wine (or whatever other way of measurement of the drinking) in a specific period (eg. a week, a month, a day, etc). And, again, with the measurement, make it something that you think isn’t too easy or too hard to attain. If you tend to drink 10 bottles of beer a night (for example), limit yourself to something like 5 bottles, or even 7. Remember, we’re trying to work our way towards a specific goal. If we set our limits or resolution too hard or too high, we will give up and it won’t work. We want to set something that isn’t too easy but still challenging enough for us to work at it.

2 - Be very specific about your goal. The more specific you can be about the goal, the better. By that, I mean, setting limits that are clearly defined. Setting a general goal is not what you should do as it can be so easy to “cheat” or not do, or that it’s not easy to figure out whether you have or have not achieved the goal. As in the previous example of limiting on the drinking, setting a specific number of bottles within a specific time period that isn’t too hard to achieve is what you need to do.

Be fair to yourself. Don’t be too easy or too hard. Gauge and determine what is your usual limit or what you usually do and set the resolution to be somewhat of a challenge to attain, but not totally out of reach. If you’re trying to lose weight, specify how many pounds you wish to lose over a specific time period. Don’t make it so hard that you’re forcing yourself to lose 30 pounds in a month. Change it so that you’re losing 15 pounds over 3 months instead or change the time to maybe 6 months. If you find that you have achieved your goal of losing the 15 pounds in 4 months, you can change it to losing an additional 5 pounds in the next 2 months so that you’ll end up losing 20 pounds over 6 months. Remember, the resolution should really be a guide, and not really a “firm” target, especially if you have achieved it within a certain span of time.

3 - Break down your goal into many mini and simple goals. This comes back down to what I’ve previously discussed in the procrastination series. In order for us to achieve success at whatever we do, we need to work our way slowly towards our goal. The simpler, more defined steps we can break something down into, the better. It’s amazing how by breaking something seemingly difficult, complicated into many little, simple steps can really make us progress towards accomplishing the goal. While the process of breaking down something into many little steps or tasks may seem daunting and exhaustive, don’t be distracted by the overall project or how many steps and tasks it’s becoming. Just break it down into the simple steps. You’ll be surprised how these little steps will help you progress.

4 - Create a time line or systematic schedule that shows a natural progression of what you’ve done in #3. Once you’ve created all these little steps or progression in #3, you should try to set a schedule or time line of when they should be successfully completed so that you can continue on to the next task or step and so on. Again, this time line should not meant to be a concrete or firm one. It’s really meant as a guideline. Setting the guideline will help you sort out, determine and focus only on the current specific task, so that you’re not distracted or overwhelmed by all the other tasks in the future. If you find that you have accomplished one step quicker than you originally set, then move the entire schedule over so that you can now continue to the next task. Unless you really need to take a break, it’s always a good idea to keep going, to keep that momentum. Just like in sports or other things in life, momentum does a lot to keep your motivation, focus on continuing in a specific direction. Sometimes, taking a break may be all it takes to lose that momentum.

With regards to moving the schedule up by the number of days, the easiest way is to use a digital organizer like the Palm, or a Windows calendar, so that you can easily make changes to go forward or backwards on the schedule. You can write out the schedule or time line on paper, but as I’ve discussed before regarding anything written down, it’s firm and concrete, and making changes to anything written is always much harder. Our goal is to make things “easier” and having whatever plan or schedule or time line in a dynamic environment is probably the best way. I guess if you have something like a wipe on board or calendar where you can easily write and wipe off, that you can use it for the scheduling, but again, there’s still some work involved in making changes. We are lazy people and most of us would like to avoid doing work if we can. If we have to do a lot of work, most times, we won’t bother. And that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish. So keep that in mind.

5 - Document your goal somewhere where it’s visibly seen daily. A good idea is to write your resolution(s) on a piece of paper (at least the usual size and not on a note pad size) and either put it on your fridge, wall, calendar (especially those with large boxes per day) or anywhere in your house where you will see it. The more visible it is, the better. You want to be able to subconsciously and mentally prepare and train your brain to accept this new resolution. In some ways, it’s somewhat like brainwashing your brain to accept this new resolution. The more we see something, the more it gets stuck in our brain.

So, if we write out in bold letters something like Smoke 1 pack a day or whatever, and we have it posted somewhere where we see it at least a few times a day, this can really help you to keep reminding yourself to keep this resolution. It may even work better if you have a few more of these “signs”, but don’t go overboard or else it may work against you. Again, once you’ve achieved this goal, change it to something else, for example, now, the sign reads Smoke 10 cigarettes a day instead of Smoke 1 pack a day. Apply a similar idea to whatever your resolution or goal is.

6 - Keep a daily running progress report documented somewhere. In this example, you want the documentation to be firm and concrete. So, in this case, it is better to have it “written down” rather than in a dynamic virtual setting. This is when having a diary, or a binder of pages where you document what has been done during the day, the progress of your task, and whatever else you wish to jot down, like your feelings about what you’re doing, or your feelings on the progress, your concerns, whether you think you’re going on the right track or not, and possibly ideas on how to get back on track if you think you’re straying away.

We always think originally that 365 days is a lot of days. And in many way, it is. But in many ways, it isn’t. If we take full advantage of all 365 and trying to achieve our goal one day at a time, 365 days is a long time and it should be very simple and easy to achieve a goal in that time frame. But, if you fail to take advantage and procrastinate, unfortunately, the time goes by so quickly and before we know it, a year has gone by and we haven’t made much (if any) progress towards our goal. So, keep your focus and take full advantage of your time now.

In the example about smoking, keep a record of when you smoked, what time (ie, coffee break, lunch, etc), who was with you, how you felt, and any other details you can remember or record down on a piece of paper. The more information you can provide and record down on a piece of paper and keep it in this progress report, the better it is. Why? Because when it comes time to analyze what you can do to improve on your resolution that these details will be very helpful. When you’ve figured out that you smoked more in the company of specific groups of co-workers, then you can change that and help yourself break that routine. Our objective is to make changes to our lives so that new (good) habits are formed replacing the old (bad) ones.

7 - Check up on your progress daily either by looking at the documented daily report and ensuring that you’re on the right track. Having this documentation (in #6) written down daily is very important. First, it keeps you thinking about your resolution. Second, it forces you to think about what you’re doing and whether you are on track. Third, it allows you to easily check back on your progress and see how far you’ve come from the beginning. What you’ve written is concrete and you really can’t lie (well, I guess you can), but the point is really not to cheat. Having everything documentated is a great way to keep you motivated to continue. You can visually “see” your progress and find that positive motivation to help you continue along that path to success. This can really help give you the boost.

8 - Tweak your strategy as you go along. While you’re on #7, this is the time to analyze your progress over time (going through your previous day, week, month’s entries and determining whether you are progressing in the right direction. If not, this is the time to make changes in your strategy or approach. For example, if you’re finding that you aren’t really decreasing the number of packs of cigarettes you’re smoking, you should try to figure out why. Maybe you aren’t rewarding yourself when you are resisting the urge to smoke? Maybe you are still tempted to smoke when you go out with your co-workers? Determine or at least try to uncover what could be the weak link or what’s causing you to not progress in your goal. Then, try to find a way to strengthen that link or make changes so that you may be able to change the outcome. In the same example, if you find that drinking out with the guys makes you want to smoke more, maybe change things around. You may want to find something else to do after work, or limit your time drinking with the guys either by showing up later, or finding something else to do before you go drinking so that the time spent drinking is shortened.

It’s very important to recognize the signs that things aren’t working early on so that you can make changes so that you get back on track quickly. Again, the point is to achieve the goal and by doing little tweaks, analysis, steps at a time, it’s much easier than making big changes, steps, tasks. Keeping yourself aware of what’s happening and how you’re progressing will help you maintain your direction. This is where we have to do a lot of brainwork to determine whether things are working or not and figure out what we can do to change things, change the strategy or approach to keep us in line. This is the hardest step and it’s important that we channel all our energy and effort in this step. If we fail this step, we will fail at making our resolution.

9 - Keep rewarding yourself to stay on track and maintain your focus. Reward, as I’ve discussed with procrastination is a very important key to convincing yourself to learn a new idea, way of doing things, etc. It takes the brain quite a while to get used to a new approach, task before it becomes a habit. In order to convince ourselves to keep in a specific direction, we have to reward ourselves every step of the way. We want to keep going in the right direction and avoid the other direction and reward is the best way.

Again in our smoking example, a reward can be rewarding ourselves with something else like chocolates when we’re resisting the urge to smoke. Or, rewarding ourselves by putting in the cost of a cigarette in a piggy bank, so that we can splurge on something we want at the end and successful completion of our goal. It’s really up to your imagination. The better the reward, the better and easier it is to achieve that goal. So, think up of a great reward to reward yourself and work hard at it. Because when you achieve your goal, we get the ultimate reward, which is you’ve made your resolution and that a year or 365 days has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

10 - Keep everything documented and organized in one area. Again, a binder with pieces of your daily progress report, your list of resolutions, and a brief summary of your time-line or schedule is an idea. What we want to accomplish is to be able to keep everything that is documented daily in a place that is easily accessible. As the year progresses, you can easily refer back to it, having everything to do with the resolution(s) in one place. This keeps everything organized. Hopefully by the end of the year, you have a concise progress report that shows you all that you’ve accomplished and the strategies you used to succeed. If you can create a chart of a month’s progress, that will help even more. We want to be able to easily view progress at a glance. Having a chart is a visual measurement or presentation. Having this binder with everything documented will be very helpful for next year when you will progress beyond and advance on all the success you’ve gained. You can easily discover any mistakes you’ve come across during the year, and improve upon it for next year, and gain other strategies you’ve discovered or figured out.

Rather than start the next year with a different binder, keep everything together in the same binder, so that you can look back on what you’ve accomplished and re-train yourself to keep your focus and strategies. We tend to forget a lot and keeping everything in a specific place will greatly help us keep all relevant information together.

Lastly, seek help from your friends, co-workers, doctor, etc. Sometimes what we’re doing wrong isn’t that easily visible to us when it’s quite obvious to others. Asking someone else for help provides a second opinion of the situation. Maybe someone can provide you with a better strategy or help motivate you, or support you in other ways. The more help you can get, the better your chances of being successful. That’s why people sign up a gym membership with friends so that they can support each other. Everyone can help look out for the other.

Good luck with your New Years Resolution(s)! I hope to hear lots of good news at the end of the year.

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