5 Years–5 Resolutions: Here’s what I learnt trying a new activity each year

I was never into new year resolutions. I belonged to ‘the right time to start something new is now’ camp. Waiting for a new year simply sounded like procrastination in disguise. And all the statistics floating around on dismal follow through rates for new year resolutions never helped either. 

But things changed five years back. In Dec 2010, I decided to train for a full marathon. Given I had never run more than 10km, the prospect of running 42km wasn’t merely challenging but almost daunting. Next December, on a blistering hot Singapore afternoon, I did manage to run the full course. Its another matter that I walked, crawled and even slithered in the final stretch but somehow crossing that all important finishing line was all that mattered,

 Besides fetching a finisher’s medal/t-shirt, some bragging rights and the obligatory social media update, milestones like this can be fairly transformative. They nudge you into reimagining your core identity. Which is not a bad thing. From that day onwards I became a runner and never quit running after that.  But this post isn’t about running.

Something else changed with my 42K ordeal. I started committing myself to doing something new that was out of my comfort zone each December. I guess the popular term for that is New Year Resolutions. Admittedly, the results have been mixed. Not all new activities evolved into daily habits like running did. But the experience has been rewarding and came with huge learning.

First, a quick check of the resolutions over the years and how I fared:

 2011 – Run a marathon

 2012 – Learn to play Golf
(Only moderately successful, can swing the club a bit but wasn’t naturally good at it, time spent vs. physical gains doesn’t quite work)

 2013 – Figure out this Meditation thing
(Ranks right on top with running as a ‘must do’ now)

 2014 – Learn to play a musical instrument
(Passable guitar chords player now, can pretend to be better than I am at parties where everyone is too high to care)

2015 – Include Yoga in my fitness regimen
(Didn't quite become a sun-saluting, mat-carrying yogi, but learnt enough to compliment my running)

So am I an expert in everything I pursued? NO
Did each pursuit turn into a habitual routine? NOT REALLY
Has it been worthwhile and will I continue further? MOST CERTAINLY

Because each activity brought new learning. So here’s what I learnt…

• Pursuing a new activity is like putting yourself under a magnifying lens
  Pushing myself to run uncomfortable distances, contorting into new yoga poses or perfecting a golf swing gave me deeper insights into what I had a natural flair for and what needed to be worked on.
  More often that not it's our mental conditioning that determines the physical limits we set for ourselves. Each time you practice a new skill you push those limits a little bit.
• There’s no common approach to planning.
  Each activity requires a bespoke learning approach. While the training regimen for a marathon was rooted in self discipline and weekly mileage spreadsheets, meditation necessitated a dramatically different approach. My initial attempts at meditation failed miserably as I was trying too hard instead of simply letting go. These lessons in bespoke planning are transferable to many other areas of life including work.
• Appreciating the value of time…because there’s never enough of it.
  Given I travel almost 50% of the time, pursuing these activities forced me to use my time wisely and look for productivity hacks for other areas of my life. I became much more conscious of time being a scarce commodity cutting down on wasteful time sinks.
  Committing to a new activity and its subsequent time demands enforces better time management and overall productivity gains.
• Learning is fun and inherently rewarding.
  Human beings are hard wired to measure life satisfaction through the lens of progress. Progress can be measured in several ways. Acquiring a new skill is clearly one of them. The pursuit of new activity and ensuing progress is simply a reward in itself.
• A work-life balance forcing function
  Work-life balance is often discussed, seldom achieved and lacks a reliable way to assess it. Setting yourself a goal each year becomes a tangible marker for work life balance. Its almost a forcing function that turns work-life balance from a mythical concept to a real measurable outcome.

 Finally, this begs the question, is it worth waiting for a new year  before embarking on something new? Maybe not. The right time to start something new is always NOW.

I do personally prefer the periodicity of new year resolutions and grant myself a space of 365 days. Of course thats an individual choice. The time frame or the date is perhaps inconsequential. An activity started on Apr 1st would have as much probability of success as that on Jan 1st. What really matters though is commitment to a learning mindset and reinforcing it periodically.

Thanks for reading this far. Its time to plan my 2016 activity. Suggestions?