[candre717]

Tips for completing resolutions, such as these 12:

a. Have a plan with dates, milestones and accountability mechanisms

b. Start small (Instead of one month using a different OS, how about day and go from there)

c. Make it meaningful, Know why you're making a Committment, Be Selective (Have an intrinsic motivation to make a change in your everyday life)

d. Stay the course (If you get off track, get back on)

edit: formatting, typo

[mark_l_watson]

That is a good idea, make a plan and try to stick with it. BTW, I find Google Calendar to be good for posting reminders to myself to do different things throughout the year: quarterly taxes, contacting people in a few months to check on how their project, etc. is going, delivery milestones, etc. I like Google Calendar because event alerts also hit me on my Droid and iPad.

[SickAnimations]

An extention to this is to use email alerts. It's too easy to dismiss an alert and forget about it.

For example, I might but an email reminder 4 weeks in advance, 1 in advance, and 3 days before for an important deadline.

[candre717]

thanks for the tip

[systemizer]

If you're in a startup that is up for trying new things, I think having a group of developers working together on these resolutions would be a great idea. Let them take 5-10% of their time during the day to work towards these resolutions. Happy developers == healthy developers == productive developers.

Plus, working together with other people always gives you motivation to complete tasks, whether it be working out at the gym or learning a new programming language.

[candre717]

Systemizer, why do you think that is that working with others helps us achieve our goals?

I have generally believed that, too. But, on second thought, wouldn't having more people complicate planning thus thwarting progress?

[systemizer]

Good point. I think it breaks down to accountability.

If you work with 10 people on a project, you are not as accountable because everyone else is responsible for the project as well.

However, if you are working with 1 other person, that person holds you accountable for everything; you have no excuses to not complete the project.

Finally, if you are working by yourself, you are only holding yourself accountable; this is bound to fail. You need some external influence of motivation to continue on, and oftentimes you need more than your own motivation.

Taking it to the extremes, if you work with 100 people to lear, then you probably won't have the motivation to do it. There are many reasons why, but to make a simple argument: the more people, the worse. However, if you work with just your friend, then you rely on one another to complete the goal. It is ment

[derwiki]

I feel dirty trying to hawk my blog post, but I wrote one a few days ago about setting yourself up for success with New Year's Resolutions:

http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/15086471518/setting-yourself-...

tl;dr is "pick measurable resolutions, try a bunch in a staggered manner starting with the most achievable first to gain momentum, don't be afraid to cut and run if some resolutions aren't making sense as you try to incorporate them into your life"

[Evgeny]

A nitpick: the amount of sit-ups you can do does not correlate well with the six-packness. At 20ish% body fat it's possible to train yourself for a huge amount of sit-ups, but your abs still would not be too visible.

If you have an ability to track your body fat with a decent precision, that would be a better metric.

[derwiki]

You're absolutely right. As another friend asked, "is the goal to actually increase ab strength or to receive an unprompted compliment from your girlfriend?" This resolution had what I felt was the least well defined goal/metric and will probably take some refining if I want to "succeed" at it.

To my downvoter, just curious: why? I thought my blog post was relevant, and it seemed better than taking 30 minutes to re-hash my thoughts into a HN comment.