Responding to change

It has been a month since I drafted and put my new year’s resolution into action.

There were 13 items in the December 2010 list.

(F) 3 failed.
(H) 4 still hopeful. There are signs of failure but it is not too late to recover.
(L) 4 lost. The items that lost validity, i.e. too impractical to follow with little value.
(S) 2 successful.
(T) Total number of items = 13

My overall success rate is S/13 = 2/13 = 15%
Validity of my original plan = (T-L)/T = 70%

So. Where do we go from here.

Did I fail? Should I throw the towel? Does this mean new year resolution is a fad?

No, not really..

It seems ironic but I realised that the only way to make a new year resolution work is to accept failure. A new year resolution should not be seen as a final decree, a heavy stone with ten commandments of personal improvement engraved on it but rather a starting point for an iteratively improved plan and action strategy.

So at the end of January 2011 I now have an updated resolution. Critical items with high value and hopeful ones are still in the list. The low value impractical ones are dropped. And there are new items. Coincidentally I still have 13 items but it is a new set.

The critical difference in my strategy is I am now responding to change and learning from failure.

It’s OK to make mistakes. For instance curfews or cold turkey effects such as “no Facebook for 2 months” proved to be not working and the value of them are equally questionable.

I will revise the resolution once a month (at the end of each month) and the whole process will continue until the end of year. By the end of year I anticipate my success rate improved higher than 15% and realistically lower than 100%.