It’s almost New Year’s Day! Since I am both an eternal optimist and obsessed with productivity tips / planner Instagram / life improvement stories, this is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE holiday of the year. For the last week or so, I’ve spent a decent amount of time [1] fantasizing about how I will turn into a better person when the calendar turns into 2017. And since I am here writing this on the Beeminder blog, you might not be surprised to learn that I’ve been thinking about what new Beeminder goals I should start up.
Improve All The Things!
My first instinct is, of course, to create hardcore, no-mercy goals to fix everything I wish I was better about. Do 60 minutes of HIIT cardio every morning! Eat three homecooked meals a day — and nothing else! Read one current NYT bestseller every week! Send a percentage of every paycheck to charity! All starting January 1st… or maybe January 2nd. (I find Mondays are more inspiring for self-overhauls, don’t you?)
The problem is, of course, I tried this last year. And it all crashed and burned around… January 4th. It turns out the reason I don’t do all those things already is because they’re hard for me to do. As soon as I slip up on any of my hardcore goals, the goal of perfection is no longer attainable, and a house-of-cards-style collapse soon follows on the rest.
Is this irrational? Of course. Have I done it billions [2] of times in my life anyway? You betcha! So my first resolution for 2017 will be to not make sweeping grandiose resolutions in 2017. Feeling pretty good about this one, you guys.
(Now, someone is definitely reading this saying, “the hardcore approach worked just fine for me!” Not denying it! People are different, and goals are different. I’ve succeeded at some of those cold-turkey goals too. But they aren’t a magic bullet for me, and one day, you might find a goal you struggle with too!)
Looking Back on 2016
2016 wasn’t a super-duper productive year for me. I didn’t set or achieve any fun interesting goals worth mentioning in this blog post. [3] (This sounds depressing. I swear I’m not depressed.) But I was using Beeminder the whole time regardless, and looking back on it, I’ve actually had success with some pretty boring goals!
Case Study 1: Cleaning my bathroom.
This is quite possibly the most boring Beeminder goal out there, and I’ve seen a whole lot of Beeminder goals. I made it back at the beginning of summer, and I haven’t derailed on it once. When that emergency day rolls around, I’m always slightly annoyed, but not annoyed enough to pay the $5 for the privilege of not scrubbing my tub for five minutes. And it’s never that dirty anyway, since I’m cleaning it once a month. I started this goal on a whim, and it turns out I feel weirdly great about myself for being so conscientious about my bathroom cleaning! I recently took this inspiration into the kitchen to break a bad habit in there: leaving dishes to “soak”… for days at a time. No more!
Case Study 2: Stepping on the scale.
Not beeminding weight — just beeminding recording my weight every day I’m at home. I’ve got a Beeminder weight goal too, but it’s got a flat road and a $0 pledge, so I’m at no risk of paying up. This didn’t inspire me to lose much weight, but it did prevent a god-awful “surprise! you’ve gained 10 pounds since you last stepped on this dusty, abandoned scale 4 months ago” moment. A year’s history of weigh-ins automatically recorded in both Fitbit & Beeminder and not wasting a $100 scale purchase — I’m counting this as a 2016 win!
Case Study 3: Stocking my savings.
I set a pretty ambitious savings goal this year, more as a personal challenge than anything else, and I hit it!
Turns out I’ll procrastinate forever on this type of thing without automatic deposits, so I’ll be keeping those enabled for the foreseeable future.
Now I’ve got a nice stash of cash to blow on Beeminder derailments in 2017 give me a bit of Real Life Safety BufferTM.
Looking Forward to 2017
My accidental successes of 2016 were all easy things. I almost feel silly for counting them as successes, because they weren’t that difficult for me to accomplish. For 2017, I’m going to keep on with that learning and beemind more easy things.
Instead of spending hours drawing up an elaborately planned zero-waste menu for the entire month of January, I’ll commit to try out 2 new recipes a week. Instead of researching and choosing the best 8-Week Fat-Busting Muscle Burn Tone Firm Plan System to follow, I’ll commit to go on a 30-minute daily walk. If these easy things become enjoyable habits, I can up the ante by dialing my road to a higher rate. Or maybe I can add a goal to go on a weekly run in addition to my daily walks. Who knows? Whatever feels easy.
Starting a goal that you don’t actually think you can achieve is a baaaad idea, for a number of reasons. There’s appropriately challenging, and then there’s unrealistic. (I wrote about this a little before — see #2!)
This year, I’m going to try to tone down my enthusiasm a bit. Creating easy goals that I feel good about sounds like a more promising road to success than expecting one day to inspire a total 180° in multiple habits and areas of my life. By beeminding easy things, I might finally achieve some of the hard goals I’ve never managed to conquer before.
I mean, this time I wrote a public blog post about it. So like, I really can’t fail now. That’d be so embarrassing.
Related Reading
- The Anti-Resolution Resolution
- What To Mind
- Resolutions For Real
- Get the Jump on Your Resolutions
- Year-long forum thread on 2016 resolutions
- Beating Beeminder Burnout
Footnotes
[1] Potential Resolution #1: start using TagTime regularly again
[2] Potential Resolution #2: stop exaggerating so much
[3] Potential Resolution #3: set more fun interesting goals