“another year over, and a new one just begun” as John Lennon once sang, and for most of us along with the parties and the incredible hangovers that we’ll have tomorrow, there will be the inevitable resolutions.
Some write them down, some tell their friends and family, some keep them to themselves but are just as adamant that they will follow them or achieve them or whatever the particular resolution calls for.
This year, I decided yet again not to make any.
But if I had, I would have for the first time applied a little business/quality philosophy that the profit making world always applies to its business plans – I would have made sure that they were SMART.
For those of you that don’t recognise this acronym, this means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely… not often an acronym applied to life of course!
Specific – not ‘I will lose weight’; more ‘I will lose one stone (2.2 kg)’
Measurable – see above
Achievable – not ‘I will lose one stone’ if you aren’t going to change your lifestyle
Relevant – not ‘I will stop drinking’ if you only take one drink a year on New Year’s Eve
Timely – not ‘I will stop smoking’ instead ‘I will have stopped smoking completely by end of January by decreasing steadily over the first three weeks using replacement therapy and then quitting completely in week 4’
Actually I could have just used the last example for the entire thing, but one other thing I’ve put in there is the definition of the tasks to be completed in a kind of project timeline. This is the other component that successful businesses use of course, and it’s also analogous to the scientific process. Not many scientific research projects proceed without a plan which define the actual breakdown of tasks to be completed and when they are to be completed by.
It seems to me logical to do this for New Year’s resolutions too, but whatever way you do your resolutions, whether public or private, whether SMART or not, good luck to you all and Happy New Year…
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