Photo Courtesy of Arturodonate

You Are The Author Of Your Biography – Robin Sharma

I don’t like new year resolutions. They have never worked for me. However, I like the idea of reviewing life annually and setting goals for the next year. In a way, subtly we are giving life direction, we are taking time to pause, reflect and figure out what we really want from life, what’s important. Of course, this doesn’t have to be at the end of the year always. We can have new year resolutions anytime of the year – as long as we follow up annually (i.e. on a yearly basis).

Why New Year Resolutions Don’t Work

I finally figured out why new year resolutions don’t work (at least for me).

• Failure To Plan, Commit Or Take Action.

  • Plan
    Working in a haphazard manner, without taking time to formulate a plan on how to achieve each goal, will rarely work. Sooner or later, we need to see facts for what they are and make some kind of plan – even if it is as small as ‘I will ____ for 30 mins everyday’. If we leave doing the required activities to chance, as our work and commitments increase, plans are forgotten or take a back seat.
  • Commit
    Making some kind of lasting change requires a phenomenal commitment from our side. A commitment to stay on path even when the going gets tough. A commitment to keep working on the plan, improvising it with feedback which our actions give us. A commitment to never give up in all kind of scenarios – even when we want to give up.
  • Take Action
    I know I don’t need to write much about taking action. Without action, the first two become meaningless. Planning and commitment make no sense if they are not followed by action. Action is the biggest divide between people who achieve their goals and who don’t.

• Differentiating One Time Goals With Life Time Goals.

  How we define our goals often play a huge role in how they turn out in the end. For instance, I have tried a lot of times to lose weight. And succeeded a lot of times as well. The frustration is, that what I achieve after one year of healthy diet and exercise soon goes away and I again fall in the range of pleasantly chubby to fat.

  This is not agreeable with me. After the amount of work, motivation, exercise, diet, controlling cravings etc goes into this one goal, it better stay for long term (preferably lifetime). The reason why this does not happen is that I define my goals incorrectly. And my life turns out in the manner I define my goals.

  The way I define goal is – I want to fit into an old pair of jeans or lose xxx weight. This is a one time goal. I fit into that pair of jeans, mission accomplished. Doesn’t matter what happens later on.

  What I want is – I want to weigh xxx and stay at that weight (or weight range) for lifetime. I want to “always” fit into that pair of old jeans. This is a lifetime goal.

  As is obvious, the requirements drastically change when I define my goals as one time or lifetime. And with changing requirements, so do the required plans, commitments and actions.

2009 Goals

Keeping in mind this new found knowledge, I plan my goals for next year a little differently. I am segregating my goals in two areas – one time goals and lifetime goals.

• One Time Goals

  • Read One Book A Week

    Read a minimum of 52 books this year. At least one book every week. My reading interests fall into personal development, management, spiritual, (auto) biography and fiction category. I want to read at least 2 of each kind. For the rest, either will do; based on what interests me.

    Reading is not difficult for me. I read at a good speed. And reading is one of my favorite hobbies. The reason to list this specifically is because with increasing work load, I find myself reading infrequently. This will ensure I take out time every week (probably every day) to read a little.

  • Lose 30 Pounds

    New year resolution would be incomplete without a mention of losing weight. I want to lose these 30 pounds without any kind of crazy dieting (this has been my criteria every time I try to lose weight. No crazy diets, no starving self). And yes, I still have a couple of old jeans and kurtis I want to fit into.

  • Learn A New Dance Style With Partner

    As I looked into the relationship area, I couldn’t pick up one thing I wanted to improve. Spending time, communication, having fun, talking about finance, doing household stuff together … everything got a tick mark and each activity scored 100%. I couldn’t pick up anything to improve.

    So I simply picked up a fun activity to do together. Learning a new dance should be a lot of fun – something to create memories.

  • One Adventure – To Face Fear

    I want to do one crazy activity this year – could be going for a roller coaster ride (I fear roller coasters) or sky dive or perhaps something else – something new, adventurous which I usually wouldn’t do or haven’t done till now.

  • Master 2 Cuisines

    Being as fond of food that I am, I would love to learn 2 cuisines this year. Last year, my learning curve on learning new recipes was steep. But with time, it reached a plateau. Attempting to master 2 cuisines will bring focus back to cooking, make it challenging and enjoyable. I would be learning Punjabi (North Indian) and Indian Chinese.

• Life Time Goals

  Lifetime goals are goals which I would like to stay with forever – make goals my habits basically – a permanent part of me and my life.

  • Get Passionate About Exercise

    One reason why I gain back all the weight is that I stop exercising after reaching the goal. I figured that if I get passionate about exercising in any form, then I will stick to it for lifelong. If I enjoy exercising, the probability that I will stick to it becomes high – everything turns in my favour. So this year, my goal is to experiment different types of exercises for a couple of months and find ways to make each of them enjoyable. Doing different forms of exercises will keep the newness alive, I will not get bored and by end of year, I will have learned n ways of exercising. I can then form my own ideal exercise strategy for life.

  • Save & Invest
    I love money and everything to do with it – be it saving money, earning money or investing money. I live a simple life, don’t spend lot of money on ‘things’ and always think twice before spending a dime. Year before last, I also had a great time learning about investing in equity, mutual funds, gold, government schemes etc.

    This years plan is to find creative ways to save money without creating a substantial impact on my life and start investing again (2008 was a no-investing year because of the way financial markets were. We focussed on paying off debts instead.).

  • Meditate

    Meditation is quite beneficial in a lot of ways. I meditate only when I need one of the benefits of meditation – increased focus, peace, connect within, as a stress-buster etc. I would like to start meditating everyday for at least 15 minutes.

  • A Habit To Stay In Touch

    As easy as this one sounds, it is a high priority item on my list. I haven’t ever needed to consciously stay in touch with those important because they are always around – there is no need to specifically attempt to stay in touch – it naturally happens.

    However, now that my friends are all over the world, and I have moved quite far off from my family and friends in India (me in US), this has become a requisite.

Create A Foundation

Along with these one time and lifetime goals, I have charted out my plans for this blog as well. In addition to these, there are two more blogs which are work-in-progress right now. I would be launching one in the first quarter and the second one in second quarter of 2009.

I usually don’t pick up so many life changing activities in a year. 2009 will be interesting because I will be doing so.

It would be crazy on my part if I don’t plan out and just start with everything. The biggest challenge would be to increase productivity, manage time well and stay motivated. Getting things in an automated mode would benefit me largely.

Keeping that in mind, my focus for the month of November and December would be on finding ways to motivate myself, get productive and get automated. November and December will turn out to be hack-full months for you as well since I would be writing about the hacks over here to keep you updated.

Plan For November & December – 2 Hack-Full Months


• Every Monday Motivation Hacks
• Every Wednesday Productivity Hacks
• Every Friday Life Hacks (Hacks for different life areas)