You Can Resolve Better Than That

If you're like most people, first of all, cut that out. You are far too bright to strap on the boots of conformity and wander down the middle of the road. You're better than that. Secondly, you've probably given some thought to your New Year's resolutions.

There tend to be two schools of thought on the matter. The first begins and ends their journey to betterment by tweeting "New Year, New Me" before picking up the same tired way of life that has defined their discontent (if you need a "new you" you're probably not content). It only takes a moment to discover why this isn't favorable...you guessed it, they're tweeting. The second school prefers to chide annual goal-setters with the remarkably deep mantra, "Now is the best time to make a change." While the sentiment of such a statement is admirable, if you can't understand why January 1 is a good day to start on a new goal, I suggest you buy a calendar and take a good look at the first page.

Page One

So, how can we become members of this exclusive club that sets rugged resolutions for 2014 and resolves them ruthlessly. Well, my alliteratively dazzled readers, below are ten ideas to help ensure your success.

1. Go bigger

While it may seem counter-intuitive to go big if you've had trouble keeping a resolution in the past, there are a couple practical reasons why this works. First of all, you are likely far more capable than you think you are. Failures in your past may very likely have been a result of you not being challenged enough. Big goals demand that you rise to the occasion and put in the work. Secondly, small goals are often insignificant goals and because of their insignificance, they are either forgotten or cast aside.

For example, deciding to run a 5k or 10k race is admirable, but anyone who is reasonably active can finish one running and just about any ambulatory individual can finish walking. What this means is that you can sit around all year, slack off, change nothing about your life, and then finish a 5k in December. How has your life improved from this? Can you do this with an ultra-marathon? That's a serious question and the answer is no. You can't run the Quad Dipsea on a bag of Cheetos and a week's notice; it demands commitment and preparation.

So, if you like the Spartan Race, try a GoRuck Challenge or 20x Event. Instead of a resort vacation, try a backpacking getaway. Don't just finish school, finish with honors.

Whatever you choose, don't short change yourself by going too small.

2. Write it down

If you don't write it down it's not a resolution, it's just a good idea. We go to bed every night and wake up every day with all these great ideas and plenty of things to do. Science says that we really only do the ones that we write down. A recent study (that you can find on your own because you're a grown up and also have the internet) concluded that tasks which aren't written down have only a 15% chance of being completed. Give yourself an 85% edge and put that pen to paper.

3. Make it a S.M.A.R.T. goal

Since you know how links work (not sausage...but also sausage), we can gloss over some of those details. I've written before about why specificity is important, so let me just summarize and clarify.

Vague goals give you an out. "Get in shape" is achieved by losing one pound and "save money" is accomplished by hiding a dollar in your sock drawer. Drawing up a goal according to SMART criteria gives you an exact target to hit, a way to track progress, and a time frame in which to achieve it.

In essence, it means your resolution is no longer just a fun thing to talk about at parties. It is now the hallowed, glittering treasure for which you embark upon a filthy-fingered quest!

4. Embrace residuals

Some goals are better than others simply because they require the completion of smaller, residual goals while other goals allow and even promote the deterioration of other parts of your life.

Paying for and owning a Ferrari is a lofty goal and requires plenty of hard work. But, it also demands what is likely to be most of your income, time, and interest as it requires so much maintenance, ridiculous taxation, and oodles of hours of driving just to make the purchase worth it. On the flip side, competing in an open ocean swim race has positive benefits for most all areas of your life. You will have to manage your time effectively to accommodate for training and recovery, which in turn will help you balance the rest of your day efficiently. You will have to square away your nutrition to perform optimally, which will improve your overall health. You will have to manage your money better to pay for race dues and equipment, which will teach you effective budgeting habits.

Simply put, by choosing resolutions that provide more bang for their buck, you are optimizing the progress that you can make in a year.

5. Account for variables

In 1910, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen set out on a brutal race against one another to see who could reach the South Pole first. Spoiler alert: Amundsen not only got there first, he was also able to return home from what was a seemingly smooth journey. Scott, on the other hand, arrived to find Amundsen's flag waving triumphantly and he and his companions died on their return voyage home. The difference in outcomes can largely be attributed to each man's ability (or inability) to account for variables.

"Bow down, bitches." - Roald Amundsen

Amundsen required his crew to travel 20 miles every day; no more, no less. Some days this was daunting and others it was a walk in the Antarctic park. It meant that they were overall well-rested, in good spirits, and reasonably consumed and spaced out their rations.

Scott's crew, on the other hand, traversed as far as they could daily, leading to constant fatigue, over-exertion, and minimal progress. A 50 mile journey to complete exhaustion one day required a very short journey the next, as well as ample rest and food for recovery. Ultimately, Scott and his crew starved to death, over-exerted in the snow.

The lesson here is that some weeks, saving 15% of your income will be no problem and other weeks it may be a pinch, but it will get you to your goal of saving X amount of money, no matter how slow and steady. Accounting for those variables and setting reasonable boundaries will still get you to your goal, even in times of discomfort.

While trying to save 25% a week sounds noble and gung ho, spending nights without food or electricity or going into debt just to hit a savings goal seems to miss the point entirely and accomplishes the opposite of what was intended.

6. Focus on patterns/habits

This is twofold.

Firstly, no single act will make or break your success. Success and failure are dictated by the sum of your actions, aka your habits.

Eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked in one sitting will not make you fat, though it will make you happy and bloated. Eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked in one sitting EVERY NIGHT will certainly make you fat, though likely exponentially happier and bloatier. Likewise, eating a salad and doing 100 burpees once will not help you lose weight and will not get you in better shape. Doing it every day will. You'll also probably throw up the salad at least twice, but that's not really the point.

Secondly, as you may have noticed, there are in fact other people in the world. Depending on your resolution, the accomplishment of your goals may depend slightly on one or more of those near 7 billion people. For example, winning a race requires your opponents to run more slowly than you. Graduating at the top of your class requires students to place beneath you and marrying and starting a life with someone requires someone to feel the same way.

If all you are reading from the above is that your goals are someone else's problem, please try not to be so wrong all the time. Your goals are your responsibility, but sometimes other people happen.

While some folks may try, you cannot control other people. You can only focus on the patterns and habits that will lead you to your success. So instead of focusing on what your opponent is doing and what you can do to ensure that she runs more slowly, focus on what it will take for you to run faster. What pace will it take to beat her best finish time? What kind of training will it take for you to reach that pace? What can you do daily as a habit to meet that standard? Where have you been all my li i i ife?

7. Have a plan

It seems obvious, right? But, you'd be amazed at how many people (myself included) neglect this crucial step of the process. Having the best goal in the world, being obsessively specific, and having the perfect timeline and environment all mean nothing if you don't have a plan.

Thankfully, as we are talking about resolutions for the new year, we have a really simple framework on which to organize a plan of action.
We have exactly 365 days with which to work. If we divide that full year into quarters, we have four, 3 month quarters. Each month is about 4 weeks.
So, we need to have tangible milestones to hit every 3 months. Every month should have some sort of marker working towards each milestone. Every week should have a specific objective that takes us towards that marker and every day should have daily tasks that help accomplish that objective.

If your goal is to save a specific amount of money (X), just assume you'll have it on 12/31/14 and work backwards from there. The first quarter can be focused on eliminating student debt while saving 10% of your income, the second to eliminating credit debt and maintaining that savings, the third being saving one half of X, and the fourth reaching X.

What can you do weekly to hit those milestones? What can you do daily, no matter how small to reach those weekly objectives? This can be adapted to literally any goal.

8. Execute the plan

Again, this seems obvious but it's probably the most skipped step. This is one of the biggest reasons why people start their resolutions on January 1, because they need a push to get them going.

There is no starting tomorrow. There is no starting Monday. There is no spoon.

January 1. Get out of bed, put your feet on the floor, and engage your opponent relentlessly. You are your opponent. Your opponent is a spoon. There is no you.

We went a little heavy on the Keanu. 

9. Shut up about it

This is going to seem contrary to everything you've heard about setting goals. You're supposed to tell everyone. You're supposed to put up pictures and quotes on Facebook, snap shots on Instagram, and have your friends tell their friends to tell their friends, that way they can hold you accountable and all come together around a campfire and support you. 

Have you met people?

Literally five people actually care about your goals. Everyone else falls into a spectrum from "thinks it's the worst ever" to "sounds cool but I don't actually care/might try to ruin it." The second you start telling people about your goals is the second people start coming out of the wood work to make sure you don't reach them. Most people don't even know they are doing it and some actually think they're doing you a favor. 

If you decide that you're going to adopt a Paleo lifestyle (let the confusion begin) friends will tell you how much better the South Beach Diet is or they will miss the point entirely and tell you that it's not how Paleo man ate. 

If you decide to pack on 20 pounds of muscle you will get all sorts of erroneous advice from people who don't even exercise, not to mention the hordes of loved ones who will say it's unhealthy or you'll get "too big."

If you resolve to get into a top ten law school I guarantee you that some of the closest people in your life will come up will a wide range of ways to talk you out of it, including but not limited to, "in 10 years there will be too many lawyers", "that's a lot of student loans", and my personal favorite, "I can't see you as a lawyer."

In the next 365 days, you will myriad reasons to quit staring you in the face. You don't need any more than that. Do yourself a favor and eliminate the threat of hundreds of ill-informed opinions from people who feel entitled to have a say in your actualization as a person. Keep it to yourself.

10. Enjoy the ride

Thinking about 2013 and my resolutions, I remember being relentlessly choked out over and over again by competitive purple belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I remember hundred degree heat at 1:00am as I stumbled across the terrain, half my bodyweight in a rucksack on my back, low on water and miles from the finish point. I remember hours of holding crying babies (nieces and nephews; not mine or a stranger's) knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it. I remember wearing shorts and my lips actually shaking from being so cold while trying to wedge a Land Rover out of the snow on the side of the mountain. And I remember the cramps in my back and the tedious wandering of my mind in what seemed like hours of visualization and meditative practice. I can't help but think about how awesome all of it was.

This awesome.

When you have a goal and you pursue that goal with everything you have, you start to enjoy every step of the way, no matter how painful or labored it may be. You enjoy it because you know that no matter how much it hurts, how hard it is, or how unpopular it is, each step is taking you another step closer to your goal. When you embrace the suck and enjoy the process, not only does the completion of the goal become more rewarding, so does each moment you spend getting there. You see its importance in the bigger picture. You see how many of those moments it takes to complete the whole goal and because of that, you appreciate every moment and what you can learn from it. 

So, it sounds crazy, but wear your bloody socks as a badge of honor on your way to your 50k race. Relish the all-nighters in the school library as hours spent in pursuit of academic excellence. Learn from the hypoxia and stress fractures from the selection pipeline on your way to that Trident or Beret. And enjoy that dirt on your hands. It means you've spent the past year in charge of your life, not settling for where you've been. 

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year.