Two Stories of “New Year” Resolutions and Two Lessons from Them
It’s the time of a new year again, a time when many people set new resolutions for the year.
Maybe you are one of them. Maybe not. Or maybe you have stopped making new year resolutions since you think you would forget about them in one (or maybe two) months time anyway.
Regardless of which group you belong to, there are two general lessons, based on my own experiences, which you may find helpful in achieving the things you want to achieve.
There are a lot of well-written articles that provide comprehensive tips on how to set resolutions properly, and more importantly, follow them through the year, so I am not going to talk about all of them here.
What I will focus on here are two lessons that I find useful in following through resolutions, and hopefully by illustrating them through my own two stories of “New Year” resolutions, they would ring more bell to you and stick with you.(I call them “New Year” resolutions as they were not really set in the beginning of a year.)
So here are the two stories and lessons.
Lesson #1 — Break things down into something SMALL, something easily executable every day, and leverage on the power of HABIT!
In February 2014, I decided that I wanted to begin on a journey to read one book a month…
Back then, I was still a university student in my final year, working on my thesis and going to classes for some of the time. Life then was pretty chill and I felt that I was learning much more from some of the books (on business, economics, marketing and psychology) that I borrowed from the school library compared to the school curriculum.
So I thought to myself, why not read more and start on a journey to read one book a month? (I was not an avid reader during that time so one book a month to me was a tall order.)
And so my book-reading journey began. In the beginning, I aimed to read for about an hour to two at one go, for two or three days a week. That didn’t turn out well. Some of the times I missed my schedule, and some of the times I didn’t have the motivation and was just staring at the books instead of reading them…
Fast forward to 11 months later. In December 2014, I have read 18 books, which averaged to about 1.5 books per month, 50% more than what I set out to achieve. So what happened?
I realised the power of HABIT and leveraged on it.
Throughout my journey, I realised that if I change my reading strategy to reading for a shorter period of time, but much more frequently, it works magic!
By choosing to read for 15-30 minutes every day, instead of 1–2 hours every three days, it became much easier to do. The inertia just faded away as it was not difficult to find (or if needed, squeeze) 15 minutes out of my daily life to do the reading.
And what’s more important is that once I got into this routine, this set routine of reading every day, it became a habit, and once it became a habit, everything was smooth sailing onwards. I was reading more and more naturally. In fact, when I didn’t read for one day, I felt uncomfortable and would get back into reading quickly the next day.
So that’s one lesson to help you to follow through the things you set out to do.
Leverage on the POWER of HABIT. When you convert the act of doing certain task into a habit, the willpower required to act on the task decreases dramatically, and the chances of you actually doing it increases.
And to turn something into a habit, do it consistently every day. What matters more is the consistency, and less the amount of time per day. So, start small, but frequent. (If you are thinking that this might not work for all things, YES you are right, as some tasks come with high switching costs so it doesn’t make that much practical sense to do them for a very short period, which in that case, the second lesson below may come in handy.)
To repeat, break things down into something SMALL, something easily executable every day, and leverage on the power of HABIT!
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken” — Samuel Johnson
Lesson #2 — Use the power of FEAR to drive change. The FEAR of the consequences of INACTION.
In October 2014, I decided that I wanted to learn about investing…
This time round, I had graduated from university and had been working for a few months.
I was earning some income and had savings every month which went into a deposit savings account. The interest rate that I was getting from the bank was less than 0.5% (I am based in Singapore), so I decided that I wanted to learn about investing so that I could put my money into better use.
I decided that I would probably start with one or two investment books, and probably a few free investment seminars.
Fast forward one year later. By the end of September 2015, I had read 13 investment-related books (on value investing, personal finance, real estate and tax), attended more than 10 investment workshops/ gathering sessions, and met like-minded friends, and had been learning and putting the things that I had learnt into practice by being in the market.
Within one year, I had learned much more than what I set out to achieve and progressed beyond my expectation in my investment journey.
So how did I do it? How did I nudge myself to follow through my resolution of wanting to learn about investment, despite having a full-time job and various other commitments and interests?
The answer is using the POWER of FEAR. The FEAR of the consequences of INACTION.
What do I mean by this? It relates to perspectives. It relates to the way you think about resolutions.
Every coin has two sides to it. And the same applies to the way of thinking about resolutions.
To illustrate, you can think about a resolution (of wanting to learn about investing) in one of the two ways (have a think about which way reflect you more as you go through them):
- I want to learn about investing so that I can use my money to generate more return and become rich. And I would achieve this by …; or
- If I don’t learn about investing now, I would still be ignorant about investing one year from now. I would still be the same. And more importantly, my money would still sit in the bank account, generating me a mediocre 0.5%, and I would become poorer because inflation is higher than that! If I DON’T DO ANYTHING NOW, I WOULD BECOME POORER AND POORER AND NEVER BE RICH!
See what I mean now?
The first way of thinking is thinking about CHANGING. Most human, by nature, is afraid or reluctant to change, and thus the inertia (if you think in the first way).
The second way of thinking is thinking about NOT CHANGING. By changing your perspective to think in the second way, i.e. thinking about the CONSEQUENCES that would follow if you don’t do anything or don’t change now (INACTION), things suddenly start to seem SERIOUS and URGENT.
It makes you SHOUT “OH MY GOD I MUST FREAKING DO THIS NOW!! OR ELSE … (I leave this to your imagination, but definitely, the more disastrous it is, the more effective it is)”.
And you can use this FEAR or URGENCY of NOT CHANGING/INACTION to drive you. Trust me, it can be a very powerful force when harnessed properly. Try it for yourself if you don’t believe!
To repeat, use the power of FEAR to drive change. The FEAR of the consequences of INACTION!
“The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. What tiny attitude adjustment might turn your world around?” — Oprah Winfrey
So, these are the two stories of my “New Year” resolutions and the two lessons from them.
If you have something that you have always wanted to do or achieve, why not try to apply these two lessons and work through them in this new year?
One of my resolutions this year is to learn to write better! And I am applying these lessons myself, by (1) starting with short and simple articles (read start small so that it becomes a habit), and (2) thinking about where would I end up (miserably) in my writing journey if I don’t write now (read using the power of FEAR of consequences of INACTION)! (So do let me know if you have any comments or thoughts on my writing!)
I wish you (and myself) all the best!
And if you find this post to be useful, do share it with your friends to help them too!
(If you know me personally, do let me know whether these two lessons work for you after you apply them. I am genuinely interested to find out about your story!)
