That time is here again. The time when positivism without any
basis is shoved down your throat. When everyone is busy painting rosy picture
for the future conveniently ignoring the failures of the past. The time when
your phone's gallery is choked with greeting cards, best wishes of success,
prosperity, happiness. The time when I write at least one blog post pondering
upon the goals / vision and relative progress against the same. The time of New
Year.
I'm writing this blog since
2012 (In fact I just realised that its 7 years now since maintaining the blog).
I'm averaging around 8-9 blog posts per year, except for 2014 where I wrote
only 4 blog-post. That was until last year only, Last year I posted only two
blog posts in totality. Which is shockingly low even by my dismal standards? To
put things in perspective, my target was 12 blog-posts this year- which
translates into 1 post per month. I wrote one post in January (when I was on
track), then second in March (when I was just one month late). And then for
last nine months, there was no blog-post. All my momentum went down the drain.
In fact, last year was the biggest failure where my goals were totally stalled.
Writing the blog post was one of my recurring goals for every year and it was
not taking much of effort and time.
The same can be said about my
second goal of reading books. Reading books is one of my favourite pass-time. I
could and had practically finished books in one sitting or one night. I hit my
peak in 2016 when I read 50 books in one year (I took kindle unlimited
subscription for that year). As I was free in 2016 with nothing to do in
weekends due to a variety of reasons. I followed that up with 30 books in 2017
and set a target of 20 books for last year. But surprisingly I failed in
achieving this goal also. Excited and perhaps complacent by my past records in
reading books. I had decided to add a bit of variety this year and venture into
some non-fiction and books apart from my stable diet of thriller books. The
culmination of all this is that I finished with 12 books only last year.
There were some more goals that
I listed last year like participating in half marathon, writing my own book.
These were not even touched last year.
One of the resolutions made by
me last year was that I will not set any goal again if I cannot achieve these
goals. I'm maintaining this blog since 2012 (as stated earlier too) and writing
one blog on New Year Resolutions (with bells and whistles) since 2015. For last
4 year, I have been trying different takes on motivating myself and convince
myself against all proofs that coming year will be different from the one gone
by.
Hence from this year 2019,
there will be no new goals anymore. Its more imperative to get to the root
of the failure against new year resolutions that creating more resolutions. One
of the while elephants in the room that nobody wants to talk about is time for
reflection in my daily schedule or the lack of it. For majority of last year, I
did not even have enough time to sleep, let alone finding time for anything
else.
Proper time management is one
thing I need to work upon, however cliché that may sound. The first and
foremost thing is to take out slice of time out of 24 hours which currently
seems impossible with my job. Changing the job should have been my first goal /
resolution from last 2 - 3 years. But I have been afraid to put this explicitly
in the list. Even though I'm working continuously for better job. Well its high
time I take the bull by the horn and decide that I will be changing my job this
year for better salary and better work-life balance. Last year I had two or
three serious opportunity to change over but unfortunately could not realise
any. Currently also one serious opportunity is under discussion and hopefully I
could achieve one major landmark at staring of year itself. Keeping fingers
crossed for now.
The second and equally
important part is to work on the willpower so that I don't waste the tiny
sliver of idle time available in jam packed schedule. I have been guilty of
this in past. Wasting time.
That's all for now. It’s the
first few days of the New Year. I'm lucky to have bunch of leaves around near
year time. I'm on leave since 29 December. That makes it 5 days on a trot. I feel
well rested now. And hopefully will start the new year on high note. And
maintain the momentum.
