New Year Resolution

As the new year approaches, most people sit down and start making resolution for the new year. The resolutions people like to write for themselves testifies how they want their life to be and what they dream about. For instance, almost 50% of the people resolve to reduce their weight by various exercises, dieting, yoga, gymming, walking, jogging etc. Students resolve to study hard to achieve the desired grades, Parents resolve to take better care and nourishment of their child, spouses resolve to make amends of their grudges and make new year a happy one, a drunkard may resolve to reduce the alcohol intake and be a good citizen and office goers aims to work hard to get promotion and better appraisal or may be a better job.



When i see people resolutions, I realize how unrealistic people set their goals and after year end, they stuck with the fact how ridiculously the year went by without even half of their resolution materialized. I believe that resolutions or goals set should adhere to what we all have learnt mnemonic "SMART" i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time based.



i) Specific: The resolution should be clear and concisely made. It should be a one liner. For example: to reduce weight, to seek new opportunities, to enhance religious knowledge etc. Making a resolution that is incomprehensible when it is communicated to acquaintance/ colleagues would mean oneself has no idea of what actually is intended to be achieved.



ii)) Measurable: The resolution set must be capable of being measured. For example, if a smoker makes a resolution to refrain from smoking at once, he would not be able to do it. It requires will power, perseverance and determination to forgo what has become the addiction i.e. after every lunch or dinner, we see people instinctively lit cigarettes. For cigarette lovers, the measurable resolution would be to reduce the intake by 1/10th the first month, 3/10th the second one, half the third month. It will be troublesome in the first month as they will crave to satisfy their puffing desires. But gradually, by adhering to the reduction plan set earlier, the smoking habit would cease.



iii & iv) Attainable & Realistic: The resolution set must be realistic. It must be attainable for human being. For example, if a bulgy/ puffy woman resolve to reduce weight by 80 pounds in a year without freeing herself from her daily chorus, the resolution would totally be unrealistic and out of the world. Just like the Measurable quality of the resolution, it must be realistic. If a woman frees herself for an hour or half an hour a day, the realistic target would be to reduce weight by 3 kg a month, this is quite realistic as she would be able to complete her office tasks and daily home chorus and also would be able to give time to her family.



v) Time Bounded: The resolution must be time bounded. This is to say that there must be a timeline to achieve a realistic and measurable goal. For instance, a person might resolve to increase his word-hoard of a particular language. He must resolve for each day and devote certain time to increase his vocabulary, tenses or other grammatical rules of that language. For instance, he should set a target of 3 new words a day to increase his word hoard by 1,095 words after a year.



Keeping in mind the above must haves while resolving for a new year would definitely makes a person hell-bound at achieving it and after a year, when he will sit and check how many of his resolutions materialized, he would be delightful to see that he not only achieves his targets but would find himself more determined to set new goals with high spirit and dash, rather than regurgitating the old ones.



My Resolution for this year: Though i have never been fond of making a resolution but i feel the importance of setting a goal and evaluating oneself, appraising for the accomplishments and critically censure for failures. One of my few goals for this year is to increase my vocabulary, which i also mentioned earlier in time-bounded feature of the goal. What I am doing to achieve it is i am keeping a notebook calendar where each day i write a new word early morning, the meaning and usage. It will increase my vocabulary by 365 words. Secondly, i am starting to write articles like this one each week and this is the first one, so my target is to write 52 articles this year in which i would learn at least eight new words. Lastly, i am always keen to read books and now i have set target to read at least 8 books on self-help, 12 fiction books, few articles from newspapers and this will add at least 25 new words per book and 4 words per week from newspapers in my word hoard. My fingers are crossed and i am committed to achieve this goal of increasing my vocab by 1,500 words.