Chris Garrett’s Personal Blog

I have a funny history with new years resolutions. Part of the problem is I have a poor record in keeping resolutions, especially those I think I should make rather than want to make. My feeling also is people should just do this stuff rather than wait until some arbitrary point in their calendar but inevitably I don’t.

Anyway, as I said in my post where I started thinking about this stuff (Self binding, willpower and new-years resolutions) the way to ensure you stick to a resolution is to tell others about it and perhaps apply a penalty to not following through.

Here are my resolutions for 2007

1. Give my family more attention - for the last year I have been really bad with this, prioritizing work and being distracted far too often. I need to turn the computer off more.
2. Take breaks - related to the above, I haven’t taken any where near enough breaks. Even on vacations I have worked every single day since leaving my old job. This is just plain wrong. I need to set aside time every day to actually get out of the house and spend more time thinking about things other than work.
3. Consider my health - if I do (1) and (2) I should be healthier already. In addition I can take walks, get my bike back out of storage, get fresh air.
4. Eat better - it’s not just exercise, to achieve (3) I need to eat more healthily. A lot of my bad diet is because of requiring a high level of caffeine to blood ratio in order to keep going and grabbing snacks to eat at the keyboard rather than taking proper lunch breaks. I need to eat fruit and vegetables. Drink less coffee. Paradoxically I will probably be more productive if I do these things. At the very least I hope to get fewer colds.
5. Blog more - on the surface unrelated to the others in fact I think blogging will help my “mental health”. Blogging is something I both find stimulating and therapeutic. It’s good for my ego (in both reward and punishment, heh). Since work commitments stopped me being able to blog quite so much at DSLRBlog and then we stopped blogging at Performancing I have gotten out of practice. I need to revive DSLRBlog, do some guest blogging and start a new blog.

So what about rewards and penalties?

Spending time with my family brings its own rewards, I just need to remind myself that nobody in their right mind expects me to work 24/7. No sane person should be checking email and feeling guilty during school nativity or doctors appointments. It has been pressure from myself making me do this, I just need to give myself permission to have a healthier work and life balance. My main problem here is after going from being an employee to running my own business I never changed my mindset, I swapped one employment for another but projected “boss” onto my client. My clients aren’t going to tell me when it is ok to stop working for the night or tell me to take a break. I need to have a business mindset or go back to being an employee. This is perhaps the easiest to achieve, I simply make an agreement with my wife and daughter that I will stop neglecting them, they will let me know if I slip into old ways.

Hardest will be health and nutrition. I’m not very good and refusing myself treats. Forcing myself to have breakfast, a healthy breakfast, would be a good start. It might control my appetite so I don’t graze on sugary crap at the very least. I need to concentrate on setting aside time in the day to get fresh air and exercise. The majority of days I don’t set foot outside my house, whole weeks can go by without any fresh air at all. I’m going to pick Amy up from school on foot and take proper lunch breaks, hopefully with a “get outside” component. Preferably not to the fish and chip shop or drive-through (although I full expect it will end up that way many days). If I fool myself now into thinking this will be a “diet” or fully abstaining from fatty foods I am doomed to fail. Perhaps a better strategy would be a gradual improvement. This needs more thought. Perhaps I should blog it, confessing to you guys about my progress might be all the motivation I need. And Clares nagging of course …

The blogging one could be hard or easy, I really don’t know at this point.

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This entry was posted OLD on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.