new year resolutions

Years ago I came up with a long list of things I wanted to change about myself. I told a friend. Wisely, she advised me to think of them as guidelines rather than new year resolutions. That would remove the pressure. I'm sure she was right. This year, however, I have found a way around the problem. My resolution for 2011 is health improvement. A superficial 'unpacking' of that would reveal that I use the word 'health' in a holistic way, encompassing physical, mental and emotional health. A further exploration would reveal a potentially overwhelming list of various activities to achieve such health improvement. And if I were to count them up, I'm sure the list would be longer than the one my friend considered daunting.

The big question for me is: would it be better to take one or two of the tasks leading to better health, and do them well, or try to do a little bit of them all. When I worked in health promotion, I had the same dilemma. Part timers always seem to end up with disproportionately more work than their allocated time allows. We would commit to achieving a certain number of objectives, almost always undoable as a considerable part of a job like this is reactive. Someone will contact you to ask you to deliver some training, or to update a resource. My colleagues were in the same position - too much work. We used the metaphor 'spinning plates'. If we had eight objectives, we might try to do a little work on four of them - enough to keep the plate spinning. If we felt panicky, we might find ourselves scurrying from one piece of work to another, to convince ourselves we were getting through it. Or we might try to be very focussed and work for a decent period of time on one objective to feel we were making significant progress.



With my goal of health improvement, it would be easy to devote most of the day to the lengthy list of potential tasks. Or I could just single out some and really go for it. The debate in my head continues as the January Saturday unfolds.


Indecisively yours

Jane