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How to NOT Suck at Your New Year’s Resolutions

This article pays homage to Baker’s How NOT to suck at Blogging over on Man Vs. Debt.  Thanks Baker!

Let’s be honest, you probably don’t remember your New Year’s resolutions from last year.

Sure, you were full of good intentions, vigor, and excitement…only to give up a few weeks later on your resolutions for one reason or another: life got in the way, they were pushed to the back burner, and then forgotten.  It happens.  A few days ago I’m guessing a lot of you woke up (hung over) on New Year’s Day and said, “this year is going to be different.”

I’m here to tell you that unless you suck-proof your New Year’s resolutions, NOTHING will change.

Luckily, today is your lucky day.

How Playing X-Box Helps

I’m going to assume most of you are familiar with the achievement system on Xbox Live.

If you’re not, here’s a quick rundown: every game has a list of specific goals and targets that you need to accomplish in order to get recognition (and points) for that achievement.  Sounds stupid right?  Wrong.  You’d be surprised how addicting these achievements are: when you have 49 out of 50 achievements and the last one requires you to kill 10,000 zombies, you’re going to stay up until 5AM playing the damn game just for that last one.

Why? Because it’s super satisfying to cross an item off a list and have something to show for it.

You know the EXACT amount of zombies you need to wipe out, or how fast you need to beat the game, and so on.  Some of these achievements are ridiculous (beat the whole game using just a wrench, for example), but they are the video game version of “carrot on the end of the stick dangled in front of a donkey” to get them to go further.  Note: this is not me calling you a donkey.  Unless you want me to, donkey.

Alright, let’s take this concept of achievements and use it to suck proof your suckiest resolutions:

1. “I’m gonna get in shape this year.”

Great. Now what is your plan for quantifying that:

• How much weight you’ve lost?
• How quickly you can run a mile?
• If you can touch your toes?
• If you can see your toes?

Whatever it is, you need to determine what will make you say “I have successfully got myself in better shape this year.”  If you don’t come up with a very specific answer, you’ll end up spending your time wandering around without any goals in mind and nothing will get accomplished.  Know what you want, and then do one thing every day to work towards that goal.

How to NOT suck: write down exactly what you want out of yourself this year, and hang it up on the inside of your bedroom door.  Look at it every morning before you go downstairs for breakfast, and every night before you go to bed.  This will become part of who you are.  When you set that super-specific goal, you know exactly what you need to accomplish in order to be successful.

Here’s a great example. Josh over at World’s Strongest Librarian wanted to deadlift 500 pounds by April.  Turns out he did it on January 2nd.  THAT’S how you set a goal and knock it down.  Congrats Josh!

2. “I’m gonna eat healthier.”

Love it!  Now let’s figure out how you plan on eating healthier:

• What are you cutting out of your diet?
• What are you keeping?
• Are you going to count calories?
• What fruits and vegetables are you going to start eating?

One of the biggest problems with this goal is that a lot of people don’t KNOW how to eat healthy (hint: a healthy breakfast does NOT start with a glass of OJ and a bagel).  Hopefully you’re aware that 80-90% of your weight loss success or failure will come from your diet.

How NOT to suck: Pick one or two things a month to change out of your diet.  Keep it simple, but be 100% committed to that change.  Give up soda.  Only eat fast food on the weekends.  Learn how to cook a new vegetable.  If you try to change too many things at once you’re probably going to fail miserably.  Small changes can have huge results if you’re dedicated.

If you plan on counting calories, sign up for a site like DailyBurn.com and keep track of EVERY SINGLE calorie you eat.  Half a can of soda, a third of a muffin, handful of M&Ms, whatever.  Keep track of all of it, find a way to knock out 500 calories a day from your normal diet, and 30 pounds in 6 months is a very obtainable goal.

3. “I’m gonna lose weight.”

This is an admirable goal and one that everybody signs up for initially.  However, in order to suck proof your plan, you need to figure out a few things:

• How much weight do you plan on losing?
• How long do you expect it to take?
• Do you just want to lose weight, or do you want to build muscle too?

Once again, just ‘losing weight’ is a lost cause.  You need to determine exactly how much weight you want to lose.  Is it 10 pounds?  15 pounds?  40 pounds?  Whatever it is, pick a number and work every single day towards that goal.  If you want to build muscle and lose weight, take pictures of yourself and take measurements.  You might not be losing weight, but if your waist is getting smaller then your muscles are probably getting bigger.  Win!

How to NOT suck: Hold yourself accountable!  Sign up over on DailyBurn.com, put in your goal weight and it will tell you how much to eat and when you can expect to hit your goal.  Tell your friends you’re losing weight, and have them ask you on a weekly basis.  Don’t have enough friends that care about your weight loss?  Start a blog and chronicle your progress.  I have a good friend who just started a blog three weeks back and has already lost 10 pounds.  Accountability works!

Here’s a great example: Last Spring Tyler at 344pounds.com set out to lose 150 pounds, a seemingly over-ambitious goal.  Welp, he’s lost 125 pounds already, and is showing NO signs of slowing down.

Everybody loves a good underdog story.  The world is waiting to hear yours, so get started.

4. “I’m going to exercise more.”

Awesome.  Exercise means something different to everybody, so you need to know what your personal achievements are:

• Are you going to run marathons like my buddy Tony?
• Lift weights three times a week?
• Join your company’s pick-up basketball league?
• Go rock climbing every weekend?

Be specific what you want, and then stick to it.  If you want to get 30 minutes of exercise a day and it’s raining outside, you need to find a back up plan (may I suggest the Nerd Fitness Beginner Body Weight Routine?) If you sign up for your company’s kickball team, you get your ass out on the field and play every game.

How to NOT suck: Make it so you CAN’T skip your exercise.  Pre-pay for 5 personal trainer sessions.  You’ll save money and you’ll actually show up because you’ve already paid for it.  Find a workout buddy who will drag you to the gym when you don’t feel like going.  Get through the first 30 days and eventually you’ll start to feel bad when you skip a workout.

5. “I’m going to get stronger.”

I’m happy for ya; I want to be stronger too.  However, there are different kinds of strong:

• Do you want to be able to bench press your body weight?
• Do you want to be able to do 10 pull ups?
• Do you want to be able to do a squat of 200 pounds?
• Do you want to be able to do 100 consecutive push ups?

Whatever it is, know how to gauge if you are getting stronger. That way, every time you’re in the gym you know exactly what you need to accomplish in order for you to get closer to your goal.

Don’t be a waste of space in the gym.  Have a game plan.

How to NOT suck: I’ve already covered this in detail in a previous article, but one of the most important things I can recommend to you is to WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING.  Keep a workout journal or open up a google doc and keep track of what you lifted and how many times you lifted it.  If you lift more the next time compared to the last time, success!

What is your Suck-Proof Plan?

Have you suck-proofed your goals yet? Why not post them here, and then we can come back in 12 months and see how you did.

These are my goals for 2010:

• Put on 10 pounds of muscle. I know I can gain weight by eating 5000 calories a day, but I want to just gain good weight while keeping a really low body fat percentage.
• Bench press 225 lbs 10 times. I’ve been stuck on my bench-press at 205 forever.  It’s time to finally crack that barrier.
• Do 8 pull ups with 45 pound weight added. I don’t think anything makes me feel more primal than doing pull ups while carrying EXTRA weight.
• Squat 250 lbs 5 times.
• Deadlift 350 lbs 5 times.

I strongly dislike running, but I love the concept of building strength – that’s what I’ll be concentrating on.

Let’s hear it NF community (until I come up with a better name): how are you going to avoid sucking in 2010?

-Steve

Site update: I leave for Tampa tomorrow for my kick-ass regular job: I’ll be heading out to sea on The Rock Boat X! You’ll be able to follow our adventures in the Caribbean over on the Sixthman Blog.  This means that I’ll have limited access to internet while out at sea; I’m way behind on email responses to you guys, but they’re coming. I promise.  I should be able to post new articles for Thursday and Monday, but if not I’ll let everybody know.  Thanks for your patience!

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photo: Jasen Miller

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