‘Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions, so many of you are deciding now to improve self-esteem, lose weight, exercise more, save more, reduce stress, volunteer more, etc. About 12% of you will be successful. 12% hardly seems worth pursuing, does it? In that case, why bother? Well, luckily I know what all of you are thinking right now: “Can Economics help me maintain my goals and, if so, How?”. Well, it turns out it can, by following three simple steps:
Quantifiable Goals
First of all, your goals must be quantifiable. ‘Lose weight’ doesn’t have much meaning, if any. ‘Lose 40 pounds by the end of the year’ does. This way you can see what changes should be made to achieve that. Maybe you don’t need to eat vegetarian all the time, but only twice a week. Maybe you only need to work on Cardio 3 times a week, etc. While if you just say “lose weight” you’ll feel guilty about eating meat but you won’t give it up altogether either, and within a month will be eating the same diet as ever.
Make them Public
Secondly, once you have quantifiable goals, make them public. This is the Economic idea of Reward substitution. Although achieving a goal should be enough reward on its own, chances are it isn’t. So, list your goals, share them with your friends and with strangers. This will drive you not to fail in the eyes of others.
Create a Punishment
Now you create a punishment for yourself. This uses game theory, and more specifically the idea of ‘precommitment’, to enforce your personal choices. Decide on an amount of money for each goal. A painful amount is best. In other words, if you decide on $400 per goal, you can contact four friends whom you can trust and tell them you will pay them $100 each if you do not achieve your goal by the end of the year.
So, in the spirit of things, I have created quantifiable goals for myself, and I shall make them public here. I will contact friends privately for the precommitment.
1. Learn to cook 5 dishes well
One Italian, one Swiss, one Korean, one American, and one TBD.2. Read WordPress for Dummies
I really need to
3. Create a System for TicinoWedding
This is the company I set up, which needs a standardized system of protocol for options, availabilities, prices and suppliers, from the moment the client contacts me to the moment the wedding planner takes over. I need to set up this system and have it working by the end of the year.4. Find Contributors for DumbAgent
Since I am by far the main contributor to this website, I’d like to step back a bit and find 3 other contributors who can contribute on a semi-regular basis (once a month or more). If you’re interested feel free to let anyone at DumbAgent know!5. Update my Personal Website
I tried to make it look cool, which means I’ve been neglecting it for over a year. I’d rather simplify it and keep it up to date. Ideally have it look something like this: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/.6. Run 10k.
I’ll start with that. There’s a race in April so I can shoot for that one.7. Go in a Hot Air Balloon
I’ve never done so and I should like to do so.8. Visit CERN
I’m in Switzerland so I might as well.
What are Your resolutions? How will you make sure you attain them?
*I set out my NY Resolutions in a similar fashion last year. You can see them here, and you can see how I faired with them here.
May I also recommend: Mapping them. It’s easy to then list your steps, tasks, and track your progress.
Or you could cross them out as you go along.
What I’d be afraid of with mapping is that it becomes too much of a chore, which then decreases the likelihood of completing the resolutions. Most people don’t already use maps, and once the goals have been established and announced, they should be made very easy to accomplish.
So, if you already use maps and they work for you, then fine. Otherwise I’d recommend using whatever works for you already, rather than starting something new.
I do agree with the idea of breaking each resolution down into steps though.