New Year Resolutions

As the calendar date turns to January 1st every year, most of us would probably think of new year resolutions that we all would love to accomplish. It is always good to have a goal or a set of goals and work through them to realise over due course of the year. However, most of us would fail miserably or give up half the way through if not even before starting. So, here is my personal story on what ticks me to keep going. I may not be successful all the time but surely I mark some of them complete.

Here is a good starter which may work for you – read this book titled ‘Tiny Habits‘ by BJ Fogg. Author is a researcher of human behavior for over 20 years at Stanford University and currently a Director there with Behavior Design Lab. He has summarised research findings in this book with some awesome techniques that will surely help each of us. Concept introduces us to a simple framework to continue experimenting, learning and honing this skill to modify our behaviors by making small adjustments into a daily routine.

My recommendation is not to create any new year resolutions, but to create a backlog of wish-list and work on the tiny habits around this list. By running through the smaller engagements around this wish-list as a hobby, you will definitely see the little drops adding up to a big result one day! Here is a sneak peak of my journey with this experimentation so far:

• Lost a considerable amount of weight in last 8 months, didn’t have to wait for January 1st to make a resolution and then start working on it!
• Regular reading of books or articles that help shape up my thought process. Last year I have read about 10+ books apart from numerous articles on varying subjects. The 5AM Club by Robin Sharma stands out from that list.
• Started practising Yoga regularly for a good number of months now, starts at 5AM, inspired by the thought of early to rise and early to bed. I can feel the difference and so are the people around me. Very fortunate to have found an excellent Yoga Guru close to home.
• Being health conscious, I made up my mind to move higher from less than 10,000 steps per day a year back to current levels of an average of 12,150. Last couple of months, I have been averaging about 14,250!

• Started connecting with good old memories – could track down and have regular weekend morning walk meet ups with my primary school classmates. We did a trip to Mysore too, very recently as a group. Excited about more such trips in the days to come.
• After a long gap of 27 years, traced and met a lost connection of my schooldays class teacher Ivy D’souza who always holds a special place in my life.

Achieving all of this as my good colleague and a friend Harish Ramakrishna points out doesn’t require to sacrifice the focus on the work. On this journey of exploration with experiments, there are hundreds of improvement still needed and also there are several years as well. Keep it going and let us see where we stand a year from now without having to worry about resolutions as such.