Thread: Plans for the New Year?

I am not into the whole resolution thing. I feel like anytime I make those, I just end up failing before the month of January is even over! LOL So I thought this would be a good thread for anyone like me. Do you plan on doing anything this year? Maybe go somewhere new, plan a vk trip, start a new hobby? Do you have any goals you want to get done before summer? I know it is still like 6 months away but never too soon to start planning!

Good question Korinkitty. Before this year started, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life but 2018 came with new ideas and plans. By the end of this year, I hope I will be done coding my website and perhaps even agreed on a cool hosting service to launch the site. I also hope to lose some of the weight I have gained over the last 6 months. Due to the teachers strike in my country, we were forced to stay home or look for something else to do for close to 7 months. Having fulfilled those two resolutions, I will look back at the year and have a big smile on my face.

I hear you, KorinKitty. I am exactly the same way. Usually when I set out on the new year with resolutions, goals and visions of the year to come, I don't even make it to the end of the first month! I have noticed this pattern in past years, and I also noted that when I inevitably fail to stick with my new year's resolutions, I beat myself up about it pretty badly. Now I have a better plan - no plans, no goals, no strategies, no tactics, no processes - just a determination to make each day better than the last. If I do that at the very least by the end of the year I will be able to see improvement in every aspect of my life.

I thought about all of this late last year. I decided that my plan for the next year was to try to avoid planning. Sounds a bit odd, doesn't it? Over the years I've reflected on various aspects of my life, but I've come to realise one thing: setting goals/plans has never helped me. It's not so much the plan that's the problem, but it's telling others about my plans and my goals. I believe that most of us at least care a little about what others think of us. If you care about that, telling others about a plan is going to put a whole lot more pressure on you as completing the plan becomes something not only for yourself, but to fulfil the expectations of others, whether they're imagined or not.

I'm trying to take each day as it comes. Don't get me wrong; if somebody else tells me about their plans I'm happy for them, but I know that creating my own elaborate plans usually does more harm than good. Especially towards the New Year. We often create more plans than we could possibly fulfil. Obviously, creating absolutely no "plans" would be disastrous. Rather, I mean something like (just making up a few examples here)....

---

Before: Since I am currently obese, I'm going to lose fifty pounds by going on a recommended diet, weigh myself every other day, call my accountable weight loss partner every day, blog about my progress and post my progress photos, plus I'm going to reach my goal in six months
After: I'll become healthier this year by eating better, but I won't weigh myself or tell others as that wouldn't physically impact the outcome anyway

Before: I'm going to create my review site about Japanese role-playing games, and build lots of sections, a custom review system, a forum, and ask my web developer friend for tips along the way, as well as asking for help from writers from the get-go as I think this idea could really work
After: I think a site about JRPGs could work, so I may dabble with WordPress and see how it goes (and learn a thing or two about web design), and if I go ahead with it and have produced a main site and some decent content I'll then see if other writers like the idea

Before: I've got a great idea for a game which will follow the styles of old beat-'em-up games from the 1990s while incorporating a lot of modern fighter elements and I'll make it good enough for Steam/consoles, but first I'll pitch the idea to a fellow artist and musician so they can help out
After: I like the idea of game dev, so I'll enter a couple of game jams (very short game dev contests) and see what I can make, then decide from there

You know... I had mentioned this before, waaay back, but I'd like to give myself a little goal for 2018 that you all could definitely help with.

I want to write an Outlaw Star film adaptation.
It'd be a great exercise and, if/when I have a draft, I'd love to post it here for y'all's notes.

Cause adaptations are tricky things.
There's no possible way to include everything about the show we love, but there's certainly an art to cherry picking elements to make a strong singular story that can be told in an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

So let's see.
Let's try this experiment and see where it takes us.

My plan for this year 2018 is to lose weight and hopefully, I can do that. I am also planning to save more money since I am not getting any younger and I am also planning to travel overseas probably Thailand or Singapore. I also wanted to change my lifestyle by starting up my day positively like keep on smiling, minimized my coffee intake, having a regular exercise as possible, and end up my day talking to my children before they go to bed. Those are my few new years resolution listed on my bucket list.

I read an article somewhere stating that if you think about it as 'losing' weight, then you're subconsciously going to 'look' for it again, which means that you're going to gain it all back even if you lose it. This is because our minds are programmed to look for whatever is lost. Do you believe that ?