There's an interesting concept that comes out of modern software development methodologies - collectively known as iterative development. Instead of starting with a fully thought-out plan (which almost always changes anyway between the start and finish of a project) and executing to completion, you develop your product in quick iterations, each of which produces a usable product
. This allows you to change plans rapidly as you learn new things about what works and what doesn't, while still having something finished and usable at any given moment (ie it prevents you from wallowing in dithering forever.)
The application of this concept to making New Year's resolutions work seems pretty straightforward. You can't plan everything out in advance because you honestly don't know where you're going - you don't have enough information to make a decision.
So - make a list of the four or five goals that are important to you. Pick one to get started. Write down a description ("story") of what that means to you and pick out one or two items out of that description that you think would be most valuable to tackle first. (It might be something that is so basic that you can't achieve the goal without it, eg "learn to weave" in the goal of "becoming a master weaver" - or it might be the most important thing on the list, or it might be the easiest to knock off the list. It's entirely up to you.)
Once you have those one or two items, break it down further into something you can complete - usefully - in a relatively short time period. (For Agile software development, the suggested timeline is 2-4 weeks, and that's a good place to start.) "Get the COE in Hand Weaving" is a big task, but the first phase, something achievable within a few weeks, might be "Weave the first two samples in the COE requirements". (It should ideally produce some sort of useful end product, so "study tapestry for two weeks" doesn't really work - you need something more concrete.)
At the end of the first time period, you go back and re-evaluate the goals and priorities. Maybe you discovered that you weren't interested in the COE in weaving after all. In that case, you can decide to do something different. The effort isn't wasted - you still have the samples, and you still have everything you learned doing the first two samples. But you consciously re-evaluate every two to four weeks and ask yourself, "What did I get out of the last iteration? Is it getting me closer to what I want? If not, what do I need to change
to get closer to what I want? Should I change my goals?"
In this way you can get useful things done while identifying and refining your goals. It will probably also be much less frustrating than trying to decide everything up front and then be faced with perpetual temptation.
Continue reading "How to Achieve New Year's Resolutions" »
