It’s that time of year again.
What could be better than a new year and a chance to start on those wonderful New Year's resolutions? I love to have a new project. It is fun to have a big project that requires years of secret work.
Projects that take a long time are easy to quit in the middle and no one knows. They’ve forgotten that you have a stupid goal.
I think it was Mark Twain who said, “If at first you don’t succeed, quit. No use being a fool about it.” That is the point of this column. Quit early.
There are all sorts of problems with creating all these resolutions and the projects that have to follow them. There are some resolutions that are easy and some are incredibly difficult.
Take smoking and losing weight. If your resolution is to quit smoking you have it made. You merely stop smoking. You don’t have to get a cigarette again. That is simple. The point is to not smoke a cigarette again. I know, you’re smoking up those last few smokes so you don’t waste them. Who would waste an entire carton? Simple though, don’t pick up another cigarette.
Now look at the losing weight problem. No matter what, you have to eat something everyday. You can count calories, limit carbohydrate intake or increase protein consumption. Whatever you do, you have to eat something and you will eat something. All this diet and exercise stuff puts in so many variables, it is a wonder we don’t go crazy. See how much simpler quitting something is easier than adjusting a daily task?
If you exercise program is too complicated, you can quit with very little effort. Don’t believe it? Those one hundred pushups you are going to do every morning will be easy to stop by just pulling a blanket over your head. Simple.
That takes care of the simple stuff. Now what we have to work on is the stuff that really takes some planning. That’s where we need to scratch off the really stupid stuff. I’m not climbing Mt. Everest or the Matterhorn. In fact I’m not hiking anywhere. See, that wasn’t hard at all.
My trouble is the projects that take the tiniest things and the tiniest bit of improvement everyday for a long time. That’s the hard part.
I do have to brag some. My son ran a marathon last month. He trained for four and a half months. The hard-core training was for two and a half months. That sounds like a short time. In front of the four and a half months was about six months of running to be able to get into that training regimen. That’s almost a year project. The marathon project would be an easy one to quit.
Don’t be to hard on yourself. The little things seemingly don’t yield any results. I have a friend that reads all sorts of business books. He has stacks of books that have notes written in the margins and marks where there are good quotes. It is incredible the amount of knowledge he has. He claims he just reads two pages a day. He claims that is at least three books a year. That doesn’t sound like much but compared to zero books, there is a big difference.
In a week you can get back to your real schedule. The pressure of climbing a mountain, running a race, or writing a book will be over and you can concentrate on what is important.
Quit early and it will be a lot easier. Cut down to a smaller task and see what happens. One pushup a day instead of one hundred, read two pages rather than read twenty books, or walk three blocks instead of running a marathon.
In the course of time something will happen. Just do something.
Happy New Year.
