Semantici.st

The New Year’s Resolution I kept for the longest time, one I made in High School and didn’t break until 2006, was to not make any New Year’s Resolutions. I didn’t keep the one I made in 2006, and I don’t think I’ve ever kept any of the ones I made when I was younger either.

So this plan, which happens to start on the first of January, is not a New Year’s Resolution. Such things are doomed to failure, and this plan is about defeating failure.

Over a month ago I wrote about a project management system that I felt I needed in order to work around my crippling apathy and laziness. It’s probably not going to surprise anyone that I have made no progress on this system at all whatsoever.

I think that in the coming year I’m going to have to tighten up my act and make better use of my time. There is no ‘credit crunch’ – what we have is a recession, which is far scarier. I think my employer and my position in the company are both fairly secure, but I have a mortgage with negative equity and I need to find ways of generating more income.

I have ideas that might actually work to bring in some more money, but before I can see if they’re any good I need to implement them, and that means I need to actually knock together prototypes and generally do some work.

If I’m to get even one of these ideas up and running, I need this project management system, so I need to get it done.

I don’t start back at work until the 5th of January. If I don’t have a working project management system by then, I’m going to have to make some changes to my daily routine. I get home at around half past seven in the evening – instead of having dinner and then watching ‘Star Trek’ on Virgin 1 at eight (I’ve been watching it with my wife, who had never seen any Star Trek before), I’ll have dinner and then work on the system. This will continue until the system is working, and then I’ll review it.

Virgin 1 is currently showing ‘Star Trek Voyager’, so missing it is no great hardship, although it is finally getting to the good (well, least bad) parts. This is less about punishing myself than it is about changing my routine to be less passive and more productive.

I have no idea if it’ll work, or even if having the working project management system will actually help with getting stuff done, but I need to at least make the attempt. From where I stand today, even trying to defeat failure counts as a success.