New Year’s Resolutions: Reflection and Improvement
I have listed New Year’s Resolutions on paper and left them on my desk for three years now. Of course, many of them go unachieved. Life throws not only curveballs, but also dice, sometimes where they cannot be seen. But that is not the point of these resolutions.
In 2023, I met up with a friend in late-January, and he suggested that I set ten resolutions, and try to get a passing grade in them: that is, to achieve at least five or six of them. As someone who graduated from the school of continuous self-improvement, growth mindset, and SMART goals, this sounded like an immensely attractive idea. So I set ten goals, and ended up accomplishing four of them, and was extremely close to the fifth. They were: run 365 kilometers, exercise 120 times outside of running, consume less than 50 alcoholic drinks, sleep later than 3AM no more than 10 times, and eat 30 kilograms of oatmeal. I ended up exercising only 118 times owing to an injured hand.
At the end of the year, I reviewed the goals with my friend. He then revealed how the resolutions were supposed to be evaluated. I was to examine the progress I had made towards each one, and on that basis, determine how my year went. Perhaps there was some degree of miscommunication, because all of my goals were health related. Regardless, I certainly had the best year in terms of health outcomes I’ve had in my life, and even some of the resolutions that I was far from achieving still made me feel good. I was unable to dunk a basketball or perform a handstand, but their presence on the list reminded me to work legs and core, not something I usually put a lot of focus on.
So my resolutions in 2024 were a lot more wide-ranging: I listed 13 things to do across a wide variety of categories. I fell short again, only achieving four of them: hang out with friends sixty times, visit more than 20 unique airports, read a Chinese book, and refrain from playing video games alone more than 10 times. I could interpret my career move as a promotion at work, which would put me at five, and I was two books away from reading 26 books, which would have put me at six. However loosely I interpreted it, I would have achieved less than half of what I had resolved to do.
Despite my failing grade, my achievements from my resolution list remind me that I had a good year. I did much of what I set out to do, and seeing it listed out provides me with a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. The goals I didn’t achieve also inform me what I need to focus on in the coming year. Notably, I missed all my health related goals: dunk a basketball, do a handstand, run a 5-minute mile, and get complimented on my posture. I also had a relationship goal that was rendered moot because the relationship had ended; though it will forever leave a sad note on this stage of my life and the next, it reflects a change in near-term priorities that doesn’t ruin the year.
Though hastily composed, my resolutions reflect my priorities at the beginning of the year. If I had to categorize my 2024 resolutions, 2 of them were interpersonal, 4 of them were health, 1 was career, 3 were reading/writing, and the remaining 3 were to do with leaving my comfort zone. It’s interesting to see how they’ve shifted as the year has progressed, as well as over the years, though I will note that an ankle injury did leave me sidelined for several months. I found that goals which involved doing an activity a number of times, or avoiding doing an activity over a number of times are immensely satisfying, and much easier than say, being able to do the splits. As such, these have been taken into consideration for my 2025 resolutions.
I have 24 resolutions for 2024. 10 of them are longshot checkmark goals, and 14 of them are of the satisfying frequency variety. 12 of them related to health, 4 are related to reading/writing, 4 are related to relationships, 3 are related to leaving my comfort zone, and 1 is related to career. Pretty standard fare I’d say, seeing as most people just make a health related resolution. Plus, I do feel that I haven’t taken the best care of my body this past year, and I don’t want to slide down that slope.
Is it ridiculous to set out so many goals but aim to only achieve half of them, and them realistically fall short? Perhaps when compared to conventional goal-setting, but not compared to other New Year’s Resolutions which are usually forgotten by March. My experience from the last two years has also taught me that my list of resolutions can influence my behaviour. Like any sort of calorie or budget tracking having an immediate impact on consumption and spending, noting indicators of important things and then tracking them just might give me a little bit more of a push.
Why 24 goals this year? 24 is a lovely number, the smallest number with eight factors. Though it’s a big number and might make me overwhelmed, if I believe any sort of tracking helps move me in the right direction, perhaps there is no such thing as too much tracking. 24 is also the number of items needed to populate a 5x5 bingo card with a free space. That’s right, I’m tired of not getting a passing grade, and this year I’ve come up with an alternative win condition: getting bingo. I only have to hit 4 of my resolutions this year if I’m lucky. Plus it gives me the ability to honestly say: “this wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card”. I’m looking at the randomly generated card though, and most of the longshot resolutions are very well interspersed among the more achievable ones, so we’ll have to see if I can get bingo.
2025 holds big changes for me and I hope this list of resolutions can serve as a guide of sorts. Something in between a mission statement and an instruction manual, something to help me focus with tangible actions without being written in concrete. At year three, setting New Year’s Resolutions seems like valuable that I want to keep on doing for the rest of my life. Perhaps next year I’ll print out a massive bingo card for my wall, checking of boxes as I hit them.
