Resolved: To make my New Year’s promises (gasp!) public
Like many of us, I find it’s easier to make New Year’s resolutions than to keep them. Last January, I opted for a new scheme: I printed my resolutions in large type on a sheet of paper, and then tacked it above my office desk.
In provident moments, my posted resolutions would come into focus, pushing me to be a better person. One afternoon, I was halfway through writing an email to decline a spot on a civic committee when Resolution 4, “Do more volunteer work,” caught my eye. Chastened, I decided to accept it. It connected me with neighbors and made my year a much brighter one.
Why We Wrote This
New Year’s resolutions are often quickly abandoned. When our writer stumbled on a solution to making and keeping resolutions, he discovered a surprise benefit: the deep satisfaction that comes from investing in oneself.
Reaching for my briefcase one summer evening, I noticed Resolution 7, “Work on my personal health.” It greeted me like a gentle tug on the sleeve, just the encouragement I needed to resume my daily walks.
I’m starting another year with another list of resolutions I’ll display above my desk. That little list will hover over my working hours like a bright moon of possibility, reminding me of who I am and who I hope to be.
Like many of us, I find it’s easier to make New Year’s resolutions than to keep them. For a few years, I tried writing mine in a notebook, hopeful that placing my pledges for self-improvement on paper would keep me on track. My inspiration was Benjamin Franklin, who famously tried to master 13 virtues, including order, industry, and humility, by recording his progress in a small journal. “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” Franklin told readers in his autobiography, “but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”
Even Franklin, the celebrated statesman and inventor, had trouble staying the course with his resolutions. He struggled with order, his ideal of keeping everything in its place and sticking to a schedule. “In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order,” Franklin confessed, “and now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it.”
Despite Franklin’s setbacks, I thought the great sage of the American Revolution might be onto something with his idea to keep a written record of his resolutions. For several Januarys, I dutifully entered mine into a fresh composition book, assuming such a deliberate gesture would make my plans for a better me a bit more tangible.
Why We Wrote This
New Year’s resolutions are often quickly abandoned. When our writer stumbled on a solution to making and keeping resolutions, he discovered a surprise benefit: the deep satisfaction that comes from investing in oneself.
Most years, though, my little declarations of resolve quickly disappeared beneath a multitude of daily urgencies as I closed out the holiday season and resumed my regular life. Come spring, I’d rediscover my resolution journal buried under a mulch of magazines and mail, a distant artifact of an earlier self.
Last January, mindful of how easily my New Year’s resolutions can be obscured by the tug and pull of work and family, I opted for a different scheme to boost my chances of success. Instead of scribbling my resolutions into a notebook, I printed them in large type on a sheet of paper, and then tacked it above my office desk.
I figured the big letters, as bold as the top line of an eye chart, would keep my attention throughout the year. I made 10 resolutions in all – too many to fully list here – but among them were pledges to volunteer more, renew old friendships, improve my personal health, and be an active mentor.
Even this scheme to keep my New Year’s resolutions front and center for the next 12 months wasn’t foolproof. Occasionally, I was reminded that our vision quickly accommodates large objects, allowing us to ignore the elephant in the room. Think of the beautiful painting above your mantel that you go for weeks without noticing, or the treasured family photograph on your bedroom wall that often registers as little more than background clutter in the landscape of your evening. I tend to back out of my driveway without casting so much as a glance at the mammoth sycamore that’s shaded me for decades.
In a similar way, those New Year’s resolutions perched above my keyboard soon became part of my life’s ordinary furniture, often invisible mentally though they persisted in plain sight.
In spite of it all, my little experiment brought some memorable victories. In provident moments, my posted resolutions would come into focus, pushing me to be a better person. One afternoon, I was halfway through writing an email to decline a spot on a civic committee when I swiveled in my chair to gather a thought. That’s when Resolution 4, “Do more volunteer work,” caught my eye. Chastened, I decided to serve on that civic committee, a role that connected me with neighbors and made my year a much brighter one.
After a coffee break one morning, I spotted Resolution 8, “Renew and deepen my friendships,” as I returned to my workstation. Inspired, I texted three old college friends and scheduled a long-overdue lunch date.
Reaching for my briefcase before I ended my shift on a summer evening, I noticed Resolution 7, “Work on my personal health.” It greeted me like a gentle tug on the sleeve, just the encouragement I needed to resume my daily walks.
Resolution 9, “Be an active mentor,” glided into view in a random moment as I adjusted the wall calendar on my bulletin board. The next day, I organized regular meetings with a newcomer to our workplace who needed help learning the ropes. I’ve probably learned more from my mentorship of my younger colleague than she has from me.
Posting my New Year’s resolutions in a prominent place brought another benefit. Making them public heightened my motivation to succeed. I felt a greater obligation to follow through because I’d shared my goals with others.
Of the 10 resolutions I made last January, I ended up making decent progress on nine. Packaging them as a small poster that I could see each day seemed, on balance, to be a big help.
With that in mind, I’m starting another year with another list of resolutions I’ll display above my desk. That little list will hover over my working hours like a bright moon of possibility, reminding me of who I am and who I hope to be.
I hope my newfound ritual will also remind me of an abiding truth: A vision of our best self is often right there in front of us, if only we take the time to see it.
