New Year's Resolutions

Like most Americans, I make New Year's Resolutions every December. When I first started this practice, my resolutions were pretty general, e.g. "get more exercise," "learn Chinese," "keep my temper better," etc. I didn't find this technique very helpful, though, because my resolutions were often so ambitious that I didn't know where to start, and so vague that I had no way of measuring my progress. My resolutions were more "wishful thinking" than reasonable goals for the year, and thus not very useful.

Last year I tried something different; I set myself a very modest but specific goal of learning to cook four new dishes. Although I didn't quite achieve my goal (I learned to cook three new dishes last year), this technique was a definite improvement over the old one, so I've decided to use it again this year.

This year I plan to keep an online journal, making a new entry every week or two. I have no criteria as to the length of any journal entry, nor do I have any criteria as to the subject matter. I hope that these journal entries will be of some interest to people who visit my home page, but the primary goal for writing them is to develop my self-discipline by writing at regular intervals -- every 10 days or so -- not to impress others.

Another goal I have for this year is to review all the characters in my first-year Chinese language textbook. Having spent several hundred dollars in tuition to learn some Mandarin, I think I should make every effort to retain this knowledge. In reality I'd like to improve my Mandarin language ability, not just maintain it, but I think I will have to work on that goal next year.