New year resolutions

Samuel Johnson, talking of his failed New Year’s resolutions, once lamented why he bothered to try to make them at all. “I try,” he explained, “because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.”

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” ― Bill Gates

With the old Almanack and the old Year, Leave thy old Vices, tho’ ever so dear. - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

The start of a new year always brings new resolutions that are confidently set, but quickly forgotten about.

How to create the list?

1. The things you choose should be meaningful and challenging.
2. They should be things that force you to become more than you are.
3. They should be the things that you’ve been avoiding because they would make you feel awkward, or uncomfortable.
   1. Learn to dance.
   2. Try being fashionable.
   3. Learn a coding language.
   4. Try to understand the works of Kant.
4. Whatever means something to you, whatever you’ve secretly felt would make you grow but dammit, the thought of it makes you feel just plain timid.
5. How much would you grow by the end of that year, if you were perpetually throwing yourself into the middle of the things you’d always avoided out of an irrational fear of change?

At the end of the year, hold yourself accountable

When you set your objectives for the year, you record them in concrete. You can change your plans through the year, but you never change what you measure yourself against. You have to be rigorous at the end of the year, adhering exactly to what you said was going to happen. You don’t editorialize. You don’t adjust and finagle, and decide that you really didn’t intend to do what you set out to do anyway, and re-adjust your objectives to make yourself look better. You never just focus on what you have accomplished for the year; you focus on what you have accomplished relative to exactly what you said you were goint to accomplish - no matter how tough the measure.

Accountability

(Strategies for finishing previously started projects.)

What if our year with a resolution list of resolutions is a celebrated cultural moment in your community or group or friends?

“Oh, he is starting his Depth Year this winter! Maybe he’ll finally read his list of five books, and start learning swimming.”

There could be a bar-mitzvah-like ceremony on the eve of your Depth Year, which would create a bit of accountability. Maybe at the end of the year your peers present you with a special ring.

This could help create accountability for the resolutions we are committing ourselves to. This could help prioritize the resolutions. The list of resolutions could be a part of the ceremony. It would be a dedication of sorts.

We could have a choice of who we would like to witness this ceremony, as a sort of accountability team.

We can have many separate small ceremonies - one for each hobby or item on the new year resolution list?

e.g. In the ceremony for books, we announce the list of books we have picked. Announce the list of the books that we have not read and are choosing to read in the coming year. We could ask them to encourage us to be strong in this quest.