I wish people would give up New Year's resolutions... and not as a New Year's resolution. They're little more than an excuse to fail: People who are going to do something do it. People who aren't are still going to talk about it. There's a morbid example here that I don't need to explicitly state.
If you're doing something you consider bad, or aren't doing something you want to do, then start (or stop) NOW. Don't wait for 2014. January 1 is not some magic date. Ever have a friend who's going to start that diet next month? Guess what a New Year's resolution is? It's not a commitment. It's an excuse not to do something now.
I'm just as guilty as anyone of doing this, but let's not pretend "what I'm going to do in 2014" isn't utterly meaningless unless it's something you are and have been working towards that can't happen until 2014 because it's just that damn hard.
I think it's a good occasion to stop with the rat race to fulfill small chores for a moment and think about larger goals. With that said, I almost always failed meeting new year resolutions. I think the problem for me was being in school that always burned me out with homework, assignments and exams. Once I got out of 24/7 academic pressure, I was able to work on longer term goals.
I finally achieved some new year resolutions for the first time this year.
I had 3 goals.
1. Success: Write a book on Ruby. I finished writing and I am just editing right now.
2. Failed: Create an app and get 100 active users. Launched dmtri.com, but failed to get 100 active users.
3. Success: Hit the gym. I've been going to gym regularly.
I think this is a good illustration of the value of process-based goals over outcome-based goals. The things under control, you completed. Those not under your control you did not. Sounds pretty cool to me.
I quit smoking easily last year on January 1st. I decided to quit a month prior to Christmas, but I was afraid of the jolliness of the season making me slip. I assume it is the same for exercise, portion control, and alcohol consumption moderation.
Sometimes it is nice to have a clean break in a month where nobody bothers you and where you haven't had a routine for a couple of weeks.
Although I really wish the gym wouldn't pack up so much.
Honestly it was when someone (the CEO of 500px, actually) told me that quitting smoking was easy. You feel weird for the first two days and after that its only a 5 min period here or there that gets you tempted.
He was totally, 100% right. At least for me. It was a mindset change from something being impossibly hard to something being temporary and really pretty easy. During the first two days I had an inhaler that I used a total of 3 times splitting 1.5 cigarettes worth of nicotine then I just put it down and didn't come back.
Alan Carr's Easy Way to Quit smoking for me. 10 months now and it really was quit easy after being on Marlboro Reds for 10 years. Started reading it after a thread on Reddit with no real intention to quit, smoked throughout (as he recommends) then was convinced to stop when I finished the book. It's a little cheesy/self-helpy but it's short and worth giving a shot and taking seriously. I immediately felt free when I stubbed my last cig.
I'm of the same mindset. When someone tells me about their new-years resolutions, I actually get the impression that they're pretty wishy-washy people without much conviction or willpower. And it's usually a correct impression.
I actually stopped doing it for some time already, but will continue in 2014: I stopped to train to failure. If you are into strength training I strongly suggest to give this a try in 2014, I read a few books about it but I'm not able to give you a short TLDR that is accurate, but if you wanna try:
- Make about half the reps you could do with a given weight, but make sure you still do a great total volume.
- Train every important exercise like bench and squat at least two times every week.
- Form is everything. Train with great form.
If you are like me with a family, a full time job, and so forth, this may do wonders: never tired, faster improvements in strength.
Training to failure increases sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (makes muscles bigger by storing more sarcoplasm, but doesn't increase strength since sarcoplasm is a liquid that doesn't contract (read: impart strength)).
If you're at the low end of your BMI range, training to failure helps you get gains to look less like a labor camp inmate.
Training not-to-failure increases myofibrillar hypertrophy which is more strength related (increases muscle fibers, which actually contract and control strength).
Now, training to-failure isn't 100% sarcoplasmic. You will get stronger training to failure, just not as fast as training not-to-failure. But, training not-to-failure won't fill out the arm holes of your t-shirts.
A good starter plan to look solid: two months of to-failure, then back off and do two months of almost-to-failure (within 2-3 reps of failure, but never failing), then finish up with two months of never more than half way to failure.
Training to-failure gives your muscles a more "puffy" look (because they are filled with the liquid sarcoplasm—the key ingredient in sarcasm). Training not-to-failure makes muscles more dense giving you the appearance of being more cut.
I spent way too much time in working at my computer last winter. I would work 12-16 hour days eating 1-2 meals. At 22 yrs old, I dropped down to the same weight I was when I was 15 (150). That's when I got my ass into gear and tried the Geek to Freak program laid out in The Four Hour Body.
Tim F says he was able to gain 34 lbs of lean muscle in 4 weeks working out ~4 hrs total. I did due diligence on the method and was actually able to go from 150 to 170+ within 4 weeks.
A couple things I learned:
• Most people put way too much emphasis on gym time and too little on nutrition. I would say nutrition is 80% of the work. Recovery time is extremely important for rapid growth too.
• When trying to cram as many calories in a day as possible, a meal plan is a must. The more strict the better.
• You can get better results curling a 10 lb dumbbell with proper technique than curling a 100 lb dumbbell with poor form.
• For muscle growth, I prefer only 1 set of high weight with low reps (6 reps min, 12 reps max)
• LOMAD (one liter of milk a day) is a lot easier than it sounds.
I was taught a similar thing when practicing juggling. It was quite a revelation to me.
In juggling especially, if you practice until you fail each time you waste a lot of time picking things back up.
Whereas if you practice an amount you are more than capable of you spend more time practicing properly and also spend time learning how to finish properly.
I had already recently come up with a list of things to stop doing:
- eating meat and dairy (mostly... I just don't want to contribute to the animal cruelty/factory farming epidemic. I'll still eat fresh caught fish and free-range meat)
- using Facebook, Google, and other stuff that contributes to the surveillance state.
- using non-open source stuff. Starts with transitioning to Linux.
- purchasing stuff that supports IP law or DRM.
- using "herbal supplements" that support violent drug cartels. Still fine with anything produced by other means.
The hardest part is building a habit of not doing stuff that you've been trained to do since birth, such as changing your diet to vegetarian. Decided to use a spreadsheet to keep track. I may still forget and screw it up, but at least every day I have to remind myself whether I did it right or not, which slowly reinforces the correct habits. Has been working pretty well so far.
I stopped eating red meat for similar reasons (I live in China and free-range is quite a premium, although I may have some now and then when back in the West).
Instead of a spreadsheet I use https://chains.cc/ from Seinfield's "Don't break the chain".
48 weeks no red meat, 46 weeks no smoking, 3 weeks no coffee. Seems to help!
I'm going to stop making excuses for other people. I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt myself, but if that's not working between two other people I'm not going to take someone else's bullet. Been there, done that, the T-shirt got ruined.
I'm going to stop cutting into my sleep schedule, especially my REM sleep, for pointless matters. By increasing my sleep from 4 to 7 hours, my mood's gone up, my depression has near disappeared, my energy has risen, and my confidence is finally back to where I want it to be.
I'm going to (actually already have) severely cut back on the amount of time I spend at HN, Reddit and other social sites. It's just not a productive use of my time, and life is too short to fritter away the hours doing nothing.
I've been Reddit-free for over two years. You can do it!
How? Just stop. You can't peek. You can't view it for "just a minute." You can't "just browse." The only solution is to not visit at all.
Give it a few days and it'll fall out of your daily routine altogether.
Also: edit your history to remove all reddit history so your browser navbar doesn't auto-complete when you reflexively open a new tab and start typing "re...".
I've quit eating red meat, smoking, and coffee so far this year and I think this one will be next for me and embarrassingly maybe the hardest! Thanks for the tip.
I would try to stop wasting time and be more focused on my topcoder rank!!! i want to enter the Red zone, right now i am in Green zone(i know i'll do it).
As a first instance: I will stop using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and switch totally to Pixelmator and Sketch.
Second: relay more on data when meetings. This year I had a successful couple of meetings with destroying data so business men couldn't deny the facts and stopped the opinionated stuff. I will try to do it next year as a standard.
I'm happier with moderation. Perhaps I'll dance more, and drink less - or perhaps the reverse. But I'm pretty happy with my life right now; no need for any drastic changes.
My New Years Resolutions are always to continue to do certain things that I'm already doing. I don't resolve to stop or start something, I only resolve to continue painting, or drawing, or fiddling with electronics projects, or writing stupid game projects that won't ever see the light of day. I resolve to do this because I know that these activities shape who I am and I draw a significant amount of happiness from them.
So basically, the resolution is to not let the doldrums of life get in the way of the things I enjoy.
Why not figure out how to become a valuable enough person that you can leave, if you think the USA sucks? Eg; with a degree and a few years experience in software and learning french, you should qualify for Canada. Start looking at jobs in Britain and see what you'd need to get hired by someone who'd get you a working visa, like Google.
> it's the only form of protest I can think of that might actually affect things
Wait, that's apathy. Don't you think being selective about where you contribute is the right way to go? (I understand the idea of avoiding the "intelligence in the service of madness" trap but there's still a lot of good in the world.)
Yes, it would be much more comfortable to continue riding inside the machine that tramples others than to be the others. Perhaps the divide is how you see of our current global actions. Truly sinister, or just the actions of a jumbled congress/governing system.
If you're doing something you consider bad, or aren't doing something you want to do, then start (or stop) NOW. Don't wait for 2014. January 1 is not some magic date. Ever have a friend who's going to start that diet next month? Guess what a New Year's resolution is? It's not a commitment. It's an excuse not to do something now.
I'm just as guilty as anyone of doing this, but let's not pretend "what I'm going to do in 2014" isn't utterly meaningless unless it's something you are and have been working towards that can't happen until 2014 because it's just that damn hard.