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New Years Resolutions - An Engineering Approach
Hugh Pickens writes "Four out of five people who make New Year's resolutions will eventually break them and a third won't even make it to the end of January says the NY Times. But experts say the real problem is that people make the wrong resolutions. The typical resolution often reflects a general desire. To engineer better behavior, it is more productive to focus on a specific goal. '"Many clients make broad resolutions, but I advise them to focus the goals so that they are not overwhelmed," says Lisa R. Young. "Small and tangible one-day-at-a-time goals work best."' Here are some resolutions that experts say can work: To lose weight, resolve to split an entree with your dining partner when dining out. To improve your fitness, wear a pedometer and monitor your daily activity. To improve family life, resolve to play with your kids at least one extra day a week. To improve your marriage, find a new activity you and your spouse both enjoy such as taking a pottery class. On a lighter note: What was Steve Jobs' New Year's Resolution?"
Is to make new years resolutions retrospectively.
Those who have access to a time machine of course do not need this and can go about it the oldfashioned way.
MP3 Search Engine
The same resolution he makes every year, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
OK, my New Year's Resolution is 1920x1200.
I swear, no more fiddling around with 4:3 aspect ratios of the past. The CRT hits the junk pile in 2004, replaced by LCD, so help me.
I use the same approach. We work better with smaller goals, which can be quantified. Its easier to remain focussed on small goals which can be achieved quickly, rather than larger goals which may tend to overwhelm us and also may result in loss of motivation after a while. And the same approach can be used in many other areas, not just new year resolutions. Infact, I'd rather call it a good management approach than an engineering approach. *ducks for cover*
In Soviet Russia, everything runs linux.
To improve marriage, people here need need to get a date first. That invovles getting a shave and getting rid of the ponytail. And getting rid of the same t-shirt that has been worn the last 40 days.
No. slashdot is not going to give up on this by the end of January. They are gonna give up by the end of next week.
The easiest way to keep your New Years Resolutions are to start with a non issue. If you already go to the gym three days a week, make your resolution to get in shape. If you are 20 lbs underweight then make your resolution to not not get fat.
An Engineering Approach? Let me guess the same resolution as last year and all years past for that matter, talk to a woman this year
To me, and this is probably the engineer in me speaking, the arbitrary designation of the end of the year as a time to make life adjustments is very odd. If there is a problem in your life or something that needs changing, it seems like you should work to correct that whenever you discover it. The big push for resolutions around new years seems counterproductive in that many people may wait to make changes until "the new year".
It seems like personal growth should be a cycle of small, incremental improvements made throughout your life.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember as a kid making New Year's resolutions, and forgetting about them usually before the end of the night.
I don't think I've even bothered to make one for the past 15-20 years.
So "scientific approach" to keeping them aside - Do people actually make resolutions they ever intend to keep, or do these just amount to 30 seconds of introspection to observe a flaw about yourself, only to forget it a few minutes later? Do you actually say to yourself, "This year, I will get that promotion", and mean it in any way more concrete than mere wishful thinking?
I once resolved never to make a New Years resolution again. Happily, I have yet to break it.
Kill anyone I meet who has a myminicity account.
Why does slashdot knowingly linkjack a Joy of Tech comic?
If you're ordering food that can only be turned into a reasonable calorie count by cutting the serving in half, you have already lost. It's about not ordering that sort of food. Hell, 90% of the problem is ordering food to begin with. If you cooked it yourself, you could of tossed one less stick of butter into it.
"Small and tangible one-day-at-a-time goals work best."
You mean like: "Just try not to drink today"?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
My new year's resolution is not to make a new year's resolution..
now.. did i just break that resolution pre-emptively? or did I uphold it?
I feel a disturbance in the slashdot.. as if a million heads swelled in pain, and were suddenly silenced!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So every year I resolve to be as evil and nasty as possible.
That way not only does no one mind when I break my resolution, I'm encouraged to do so!
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
No offence, but it's mostly child-talk, what I read in the summary. Do you really think slashdot crowd is that stupid? Planning, achieving goals, time management is very important to all adult people. And they're usually good at it, that's why they're called adults. For kids out there article doesn't help anyway, because it's just a bunch of pre-canned orders. Embarrassing.
Please don't let slashdot to become another "Cosmopolitan" or "Men's health".
We value scientific and system approach here, not some light journalism.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
"Make no more silly resolutions just because a calendar # changes"
Still holding it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I was, for a few years, a volunteer training coach for a couple of the US AIDS Rides (Boston->New York by bicycle, for example). Everyone has heard people make grand resolutions about getting into, or back into, shape; these resolutions often don't amount to much. We asked people to make an initial commitment to a training program of about 6 weeks, and that worked out pretty well: it was short enough not to be intimidating or impossible-seeming, but long enough that they could begin to see tangible results.
To improve your marriage, find a new activity you and your spouse both enjoy such as taking a pottery class
Gee, now where on earth did that spooky tip come from *cough*Ghost*cough*
Yeesh...where do they dig up these 'experts'?
Please help metamoderate.
After this New Years party, my only resolution is "stay away from hard liqour, especially vodka". Maybe in a few hours I can stop thinking about alcohol again and come up with some more interesting resolution.
If it's so secret, then how come I've never heard of it?
I always resolve to not start smoking crack. (So far I'm batting 1000.)
The law is not an ass. No really.
Instead how about...
..Watching one WWE wrestling event together per week.
..Being able to veto watching "When Harry Met Sally".
..Not having to have a 'deep meaningful discussion about your feelings' during the superbowl.
Go ahead mod me "-1 Troll, Sexist Pig".
All I hear is "Loose weight", "Spend more time with my depressing spouse", "Spend more time at the depressing gym."
Well of course no one keeps those. Who wants to do that crap?
Why not resolve to do something you'll enjoy.
Resolve to have more and better sex than last year.
Resolve to earn more for less work than last year.
Resolve to find something new that makes you laugh.
Resolve to cross more things off your "Before I Die..." list.
Resolve to spend less time around people you don't like.
And it just might turn out that you're spending time enjoying your life that a lot of the other things take care of themselves.
I've been studying this very subject heavily for the past 18 months or so.
We now know a great deal about how the mind works and have applied it to the general subject of "becoming a success". Being successful always involves explicitly setting goals, and this can be done with New Years' resolutions SO LONG AS they are done correctly.
I'm boiling the issues down to a few simple facts, but they are all verified by psychological studies and have their basis in well-known underlying mechanisms. It all comes from your Reticular Activating System, which is a part of your brain that is involved with setting goals (I'm simplifying).
1) Don't make resolutions, set goals. Pick the major areas of your life (personal, work, relationship, church, community) and write down things that you'd like to achieve in the upcoming year.
2) Resolutions need to be written down. No one has explained why writing is needed, but it works. Lots of studies have shown this. (Maybe it's because wirting things activates all areas of your mind at once: you "say" it in your mind while writing it, you see it, you write it, &c).
3) Resolutions must be personal. Use "I" when writing them (as in "I read 15 books by year's end").
4) Resolutions must be positive. If you say "I stop smoking" or "I stop chewing my nails", it won't work. The RAS only deals with positive commands, and not negative ones. To deal with biting your nails, write "I notice every time I bring my fingers to my mouth" or something, and then stop yourself at those times.
5) Resolutions must be in present tense. Write "I earn $80K a year", not "I earn $80K by the end of the year".
6) Where possible, resolutions should be measurable. If you want to lose weight, say "I weigh 175 pounds".
7) Resolutions should be reasonable. Don't say "I earn a million dollars a year", take your salary, add 20% and write "I earn XXX a year".
The more specific and detailed you are, the greater likelyhood that the goal will happen. Want a new car? Write down the make, model, color, options, and everything else you can think of.
Once you have your goals written out, occasionally look at them. Once a week or more will really drive the message home to your subconscious.
People who do this are generally amazed at the results. It's making use of existing well-known mechanisms in your mind, but we've only recently discovered how to make use of them.
Again this year I have resolved to resist the incessant whining of the teetotaller in the next office, and continue to support several microbreweries in the most tangible possible way.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Is this really an engineering approach, it looks like the David Allen's "next tangible step you can take the physical world" approach. I am one of those people who found Getting Things Done life changing.
I made a resolution to learn some new languages. I happened to make Lisp my first choice, and I'm surprised by how smoothly it's going.
There's a really basic tool I've written in a number of languages before as a first project type exercise. It parses a series of command line options and interprets them in a getopts fashion. In Java, I split the problem into three classes, each consisting of about 100 lines of code on average. It wasn't particularly flexible, and specifying and interpreting the options was a bit messy.
Well, yesterday and today I've been writing the Lisp version, and I'm very impressed by what the language has allowed me to do. The whole thing is less than 100 lines of code and I've been able to put a lot more power and flexibility into the system. It presents a more concise and easier to understand interface to the world. Probably took about the same amount of time to write, but I was having to learn about a language paradigm with which I wasn't familiar, which isn't really the case with the other languages I've done this for.
Before I began this, I expected it would be something like the article recommends against, but having actually made something, however modest, I'm not so sure.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Before some psych major posts about how the RAS isn't involved with goals, let me clarify.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) decides what is "important" to your conscious mind.
As you read this, you can feel the weight of the chair on your legs, feel the clothes on your shoulders, see the wall beyond the monitor, and hear the backgound noise. You can feel your breathing, and if you concentrate you can maybe hear your heart beat.
None of this information makes it to your consious mind because the RAS steps in and says "this isn't important to me". You don't notice the feel of your pants clinging to your leg, but if a bug started crawling up your leg the RAS would go nuts bringing it to the attention of your mind.
The interesting thing about the RAS is that we can tell it what is important. Once we decide on a goal, anything that reasonates with that goal will be allowed through to our conscious minds.
Day by day we are awash in possibilities that we pay no attention to. Once we set a goal and let the RAS know what's important, these possibilities start to come through to the conscious mind and we find that by exploring more and more possibilities, eventually we get to our goal.
People who set and write down goals comment on how "magical" this all appears. Almost as if there is some force in the universe that is coming to their aid. Suddenly, someone mentions that their son is selling his car and it happens to be the exact make, model, and price you were hoping for.
Of course, the possibilities were there *before* you set your goals as well - you just didn't notice them. Some people have suggested that this is how prayer works.
Whatever the underlying reasons, writing down goals seems to work. It's how people people get to be extremely successful in whatever area they choose.
WTF is a "linkjack"?
New Year's resolutions are a crock. It's the same thing as telling yourself on a Friday that "Monday I'm going to start a diet", or "Monday I'll stop smoking", etc. If you realize on a Friday that you need to make a change, you either make that change Friday, or it's not going to happen. If you couldn't make something happen in September, October, November, AND December, pushing the Easy Button Dec 31 isn't going to magically transform your life Jan 1.
The thing is, people don't make "resolutions" - they make wishes. Nobody really wants to work harder to earn a better salary - we just want to win the damn lottery.
No, that's calculus. Engineering is about welding things together. They just pretend to do calculus because managerial clients relate well to minutiae. As they say, 'wire frames for chicken-shit brains'.
If it is worth changing, it is worth changing right away. General directions are usually just as good as specific goals too.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
12:05AM. "Hey dude, you want some of this German Chocolate Cake?"
12:06AM. "Damn, maybe next year. This is some fuckin good cake, man."
Main Goal - 180 lbs (college weight)
General Goals
- lose weight,
- measure increased cardio health, strength, & stamina,
- don't gain any weight over Thanksgiving or Xmas holidays
Specific Goals- Diet, exercise, weigh in daily, tracking, & graphing (XLS); do something every day, but take 1 day off ea week
- Eat about 1700 calories a day - estimate calories, write everything down, but never less than 1500!
- Ski machine, free weights, outdoor activities (indoor activities with spouse!)
- No caffeine, no soda, avoid processed foods. Portion control.
- Eat breakfast (400+ cal) and lunch (~700 cal) for most of my daily calories - healthy snacks (~100 cal ea) too
- Fill in remaining daily calories for dinner - usually ~200 cal, so veggies, salad, and fruit
- Nuts - there's something about them and milk that helps me lose weight and feel full.
- Don't eat anything after 7pm (that time works for me); eating too close to bedtime got me fat to begin with
Since Thanksgiving, I've lost 18 lbs. Over Xmas, I actually lost weight even with the family pushing candy, snacks, etc.It is really simple, break down the problem - just like a software or engineering problem and make whatever change is needed to solve it.
It really is that simple. You are smart people. Decide. Make the changes. Measure your progress. Correct any issues. Repeat.
According to my chart and losing 3 lbs/week, I should get to my goal in August. I've lost 40 lbs previously and gotten back to 180 lbs as a younger man. Then I fell back into my old habits and didn't get on the scale daily. I now know that I must get on the scale daily and take action if even 5 lbs gets back on.
The main thing is to find what works for you AND do it.
"Try"?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
1) Stop hanging around slashdot.
2) Move out of my damn basement.
3) Get a date.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
While I feel like small, easily measurable, attainable goals are good, I think the exact opposite can work, too - resolve something general that can be a bunch of different things and is something that even if you don't totally achieve, you can at least make progress towards. And rather than being something you can put off, or start to fail at or give up on, it should be something that if you have a bad day, week, or month, you just pick up where you left off. Losing weight, getting in shape, healthier eating habits, quitting smoking are all forms of taking better care of yourself - so just resolve to take better care of yourself, do the positive things you can do, and then at the end of the year you can look back and say "well, I didn't lose weight, but I ate healthier, got more exercise, and I'm actually taking vitamins consistently." For me, like a lot of people, the problem with making small, easily attainable goals is that I do those whenever I feel the need to - and it takes a major life event or feeling like I'm stuck to really assess my life and figure out what big changes I make. Culturally having everyone assessing the past year at the end of the calendar year seems like a good artificial way to encourage that. Any sort of resolution of the type this article suggests I would have started doing when I thought of it, and I feel like intentionally putting stuff off for New Year's just encourages you to continue to put it off after New Year's.
stop fighting MS ... through a fatality
--- Resolve to have more and better sex than last year.
That gets expensive. Does't matter if it's a S.O. or prostitutes, either.
--- Resolve to earn more for less work than last year.
Not sure I can optimize that one any further without my bosses catching on.
--- Resolve to find something new that makes you laugh.
I just turn on the news every evening. There's new hilarity every day. And it's an election year!
Helps to be a misanthrope, I guess.
--- Resolve to cross more things off your "Before I Die..." list.
But I can't get Jennifer Connelly to return my calls, much less agree to what's on my list.
--- Resolve to spend less time around people you don't like.
Well now I'd have to leave the planet. I'm a skeptic, but I do follow major UFO sightings with interest. No real luck yet.
Those kiddie fiddling mofo's are lurking everywhere.
..Watching one WWE wrestling event together per week.
I thought WWE fans couldn't marry in most states.
(rimshot)
Thank you! I'll be here all week!
But... seriously. WWE? Never understood how that was supposed to be a manly thing to watch. It's a bunch of almost naked steroid mutants groping one another. Some of them wear rhinestones and shiny little shorts.
How about a one of those chopper/muscle car building shows or "rebuilding your home atom by atom from the ground up" shows? Something with hammers and saws and welding. Yeah!
I resolve to stop posting to Slashdot and- DAMMIT!
My New Year's resolution is not to make any New Year's resolutions this year.
Crap.
you meant 40 years.
If an alien came to my planet and asked me why the fellow members of my species observe holidays and attach significance to numbers in a calendar system, I would truthfully reply "I have no idea, bro".
it's a combination of setting an inappropriate resolution and being incapable of refreshing it correctly that leads to monitoring breakdowns
I some how feel myspace should be in the resolution somewhere...........
Wait until March.
It gets dark early, and it's cold and depressing in the Winter. I'm really not in the mood to start anything new. So, in 3 months time it will have started to warm up, it will be light for a decent chunk of the day, and I'll have a much better idea of what I want for the year.
To lose weight, resolve to split an entree with your dining partner when dining out.
How about not going out to eat at places that serve crap food in oversized portions in the first place? Or just ordering a salad with dressing on the side?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Revolution Health has recently come out with a way to work with a community of people with similar goals: http://www.revolutionhealth.com/goals/.
Because everyone feels at least some pressure around New Year's to make resolutions including the weak willed and cynical (95% of us), and because of the holiday season pig-out leaves us ashamed, too many of us fall for the bait... gym discounts generally offered this time of year.
They know there's basically zero chance you'll be showing up with any frequency past the first two months, they make money from your failure. Don't give the smug bastards your money!
Eat a new species of animal.
So far I'm 3/3 on it (boar, elk, alligator).
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
True. Supposedly this dates from a time when many-course meals were the norm in wealthy circles; the "entree" was the first of several main courses, so it was the "entrance" to the main part of the meal.
As time went on, the other main dishes were dropped, so that nowadays, unless you have dessert, the "entrance" is generally the last thing you eat.
> To lose weight, resolve to split an entree with your dining partner when dining out.
Some dieticians suggest this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Unless you're wealthy, or a single engineer, you don't eat out that much, i.e. not more than once a week or so. And cutting back on this quality food lowers your quality of life.
Better to stop guzzling half a family bag of Doritos 30 seconds before you go to bed. (Indeed, skip the big dinner and eat a normal breakfast, lunch, but small dinner. Or just don't eat anything after 7, like gramma tells her fat granddaughter.)
You use fat free salad dressing, which is gross, you'll be more likely to go off your diet, than just light (or regular dressing) and fewer Doritos.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Those have real editors.
Engineering is the art of compromise.