Keeping Your New Year’s Resolution

That auspicious time of year has arrived once again, when millions of us begin the annual ritual of making New Year’s resolutions. Many of us overindulged this past month in eating, drinking, spending money and ducking out of work early to get our shopping done; all guilt-free in the name of the holidays!

However, as the old saying goes, “nothing in life is free.” Our excessive December behaviour is not truly guilt-free is it? Weren’t we just deferring the guilt till Jan 2^nd? Why else did so many of us make resolutions centered on the themes of personal fitness, personal finances, and professional development?

For the second year in a row, I chose the ever popular resolution of getting in shape. Unfortunately, making a resolution and keeping a resolution are two very different things – did I mention that I made the same resolution last year? In fact ~90% of resolutions aren’t kept, and half of them fail before we even flip the calendar to February!

These statistics aren’t easy to ignore.  In hopes of improving my chances this year, I searched the web for some tips.  Looking at a dozen or so articles on “How to keep your New Year’s resolution”, one suggestion really stood out as something that I didn’t do effectively last year: track your progress.

Tracking one’s progress is a great way to stay motivated. Even if no one else sees it, it holds you accountable. When you get in that inevitable rut and lack motivation, you can be inspired by the progress you’ve made. This positive reinforcement pulls you out of that dreaded rut. Also crucial is insight into how much, if any, progress you’re actually making. This tells you if you’re taking the right steps toward success. If not, you can change things up, e.g. by switching your workout routine.

The key to tracking progress is feedback, which can be quantifiable or perceptible. In the case of getting in shape, sources of quantifiable feedback are abundant: your weight, waist size, body fat percentage, one-mile time, how much weight you can lift, etc. There are also many forms of perceptible feedback such as: how your clothes fit, how out of breath you are after climbing a flight of stairs, and your energy level during the day.

I decided to invest in a fancy new weighing scale which not only measures weight, BMI, body fat percentage, and hydration level; but also lets you set goals for each measurement and tracks your progress toward these goals. I’m happy to report that the scale has already helped and that I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of tracking your progress. My alarm went off this morning at 6:00 a.m., and all I could think about was how sore I was from my workout the day before and how much I didn’t want to go to the gym. Then I hopped on the scale, got some instant feedback that I was already closer to my goal in just 3 days, but still had a ways to go. Suddenly I felt energized and pounded out the miles on the treadmill!

Frequent feedback is also readily available for personal finances, both quantitative (saving accounts and credit card bills) and perceivable (anxiety one feels when spending money). However, if your resolution is focused on professional development, sources of frequent feedback for tracking progress are much less abundant. If you’re lucky, you’ll get structured feedback in the workplace during the annual performance review. This puts the onus on your shoulders to get feedback. Don’t despair, help is available – use Rypple as your weighing scale to get professional development feedback and track your progress. Rypple not only gets you quantifiable feedback, it also gets you insight into perceptible feedback. For example, as you develop and gain respect in the eyes of your co-workers you might just find the number of people asking for your feedback via Rypple increasing.

Whatever your resolution for 2009, I wish you the best of luck in accomplishing it. With any luck over the span of the next few months my blog posts will come with a new slimmer photo of myself!