Heck Of A Guy

The Madness Of New Year’s Resolutions¹

Making New Year’s resolutions remains a popular sport this time of year. Estimates vary but these numbers from a US News and World Report article are typical:

Americans are largely making New Year’s resolutions to improve their personal finances in 2010. Slightly more people have resolved to save more money next year (63 percent), than the more traditional aims to exercise more (62 percent), eat better (60 percent), or to lose weight (46 percent), according to a recent telephone survey by TD Ameritrade and Opinion Research Corporation. The only resolution more popular than saving money was to relax and reduce stress (65 percent).

Also typical is the failure to keep resolutions, as noted in this excerpt from a piece published in the Telegraph:

But less than one in five of Britons kept up their resolutions beyond January 2009.  And just six per cent kept our resolutions for the entire year.

You Say You Want A Resolution – Are You Sure About That?

Advice about making New Year’s resolutions abounds. A Google search for the terms, “how to” AND “New Year’s resolutions,” turns up over 2,400,000 hits,² most of which seem to be rewrites of the same recommendations: set specific and realistic goals, commit oneself to these realistic goals by informing friends and family of ones intentions, implement a comprehensive plan that breaks down the ultimate goals into incremental steps, each with its own deadline, reward oneself for success, and forgive oneself for lapses and setbacks.

If one also considers the specific resolutions suggested (e.g., follow a healthy diet, exercise daily, save more, invest wisely, advance professionally, spend more time with family and friends, organize ones life, and cease smoking, drinking, abusing drugs, etc.), it becomes evident that New Year Resolutions are clearly under-appreciated — as a source of misery and psychological trauma.³ Inevitably, this syndrome will become formalized as an official psychiatric diagnosis (the smart money is behind “Post-Resolution Traumatic Disorder” with “Post-Resolution Traumatic Disorder, New Year Resolution Type” denoted as an especially virulent subcategory) with its own 12 step programs, victims self-help groups, and class action lawsuits.

DrHGuy, it may not surprise one to learn (especially if that one read the title to this post), has developed a strategy to deal with this problem.

Post-Resolution Traumatic Disorder Prevention

The optimal cure for Post-Resolution Traumatic Disorder is prevention – i.e., not making resolutions. Just Don’t Do It.  Without a resolution, there is no risk of post-resolution trauma.

But, while DrHGuy has himself reached this nirvana-like state, he recognizes that, especially in the case of the New Year Disorder subtype, this ideal is not a realistic standard for much of the populace.

Consequently, the majority of the afflicted will benefit from  …

Management Protocols For Post-Resolution Traumatic Disorder, New Year Resolution Type

1. Resolution Redirection
For those who are too habituated to the New Year Resolution custom to quit cold turkey, take a cue from those articles and columns of advice about making and keeping resolutions. Make long lists of especially ambitious commitments for the new year; just don’t make them for yourself. Take the burden off your friends and family by writing their New Year Resolutions for them.

Heck, while you’re at it, make resolutions for folks you don’t know personally. Think how pleased the President, the manager of the Cubs, that rude waitress at your local Applebee’s, the CEOs of the major oil companies, and all the others who would be enlightened by your efforts will be to receive your thoughtful list of resolutions for them.

You should, by the way, feel free (or even obligated) to develop resolutions that would have an especially beneficial impact on you (for example, you might provide your boss with a resolution to increase your wages and decrease your hours in 2010 or present your spouse with his or her commitment to satisfy your sexual needs in more extensive and more exotic ways in each of the next 365 days).

Remember,

2. Retrolution Substitution
Retrolutions are DrHGuy’s revision (or, some might say, correction) of the current tradition of making resolutions for the upcoming year, a custom that has its origins in the 153 B.C. reorganization of the calendar that placed the month named after Janus at the first of the calendar. Janus, you no doubt recall, had two faces, one to look on past events and one to look to the future. For obscure reasons, resolution creation was associated with the face gazing toward the upcoming twelve months. Obviously, however, the risk of disappointment and consequent self-loathing is reduced if one focuses on the preceding twelve months and creates retrolutions – commitments to complete tasks and reach goals that one has indeed already achieved in the past year.

At this time of year, for example, DrHGuy, had he not already developed sufficient self-discipline to just say no to resolutions, might be retrolving, with considerable confidence,

to produce a blog beginning in March 2006 with content composed equally of wit, wisdom, weirdness, and wickedness that would be deservedly appreciated by an elite set of readers who will anticipate with spasms of delight the latest “Heck Of A Guy” post.⁴

DrHGuy must admit to feeling a certain shiver of giddy accomplishment as he completes even this mock retrolution. Imagine, then, the intense joyfulness one experiences upon completing genuine retrolutions, a response that, significantly, occurs immediately — without that frustrating delayed gratification thing.

It may be helpful to think of retrolution therapy this way: Retrolutions are to Resolutions as Methadone is to Heroin

Palliation For Incurable Cases

For those who are unresponsive to these protocols or other measures and thus unable to resist the lure of resolution-making, DrHGuy has palliative measures:

1. Choose Low-Risk Resolutions
The less difficult your resolution, the less likely you are to fail. Especially useful in this regard are non-negative resolutions; e.g., “I will not enter Chicago police headquarters shouting profane insults at the officers while brandishing a realistic but non-operative plastic replica of an assault rifle” is, for many of us, an acceptable risk.

2. Choose High Benefit Resolutions
Some individuals are convinced that choosing resolutions that are too easy is somehow equivalent to cheating. If you suffer from this delusional state, at least select goals that have a high payout. DrHGuy must confess, for example, that the year he spent pursuing his resolution to create the perfect margarita, while not completely successful, was not without certain gratifications.

The Universal Antidote

The key point, essential to any program, is the DrHGuy-centric Resolution. Highly recommended are the following:

• I will read every Heck Of A Guy post within six minutes of publication
• I will study to show myself approved unto DrHGuy, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth
• I will proclaim to at least one new person every day, “Damn, that Heck Of A Guy blog is good”
• I will send significant sums of cash, in small unmarked bills, to DrHGuy weekly

1. This post is based on a similar Heck Of A Guy entry published in 2006, New Year’s Resolutions Jujitsu. [↩]
2. To avoid the e-mail from statistically savvy search sorts, DrHGuy herewith stipulates that (1) the number of hits on a Google search is, at best, a quick and dirty indicator of comparative interest in a subject, (2) Google lists of this sort typically contain duplicates, and (3) the number of hits in Google searches for anything other than the accepted names of people, places, and concepts are heavily dependent on the precise search terms entered. In this case, searching Google for “how to” AND “New Year’s resolutions” produces a list of titles such as How To Stick To New Year’s Resolutions, How To Make An Actual New Year’s Resolution, How To Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions, How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions, How To Make A New Year’s Resolution, How To Stick To Your Resolution, How To Keep Up With Those New Year’s Resolutions, How To Make New Years Resolutions Last, and How To Make New Year’s Resolutions That You Can Keep. [↩]
3. The only clear cut benefit from New Year’s Resolutions, in fact, is the upward blip in the economy resulting from the purchase of memberships in health clubs from resolution-motivated individuals who will use those exercise facilities an average of 1.3 times. [↩]
4. Because the goal is illustration of a concept, this retrolution is vastly oversimplified; for maximum benefit, retrolutions are suffused with detail. The Heck Of A Guy blog retrolution might include, for instance, sub-retrolutions specifying the following content:
   • Recipes featuring dishwasher-cooking
   • An extended description of a site that includes an operatic Hymn To Glaucoma
   • A proffering of sexual perversity to and subsequent online flirtation with a gorgeous female singer who has put out an outstanding album and is Leonard Cohen’s lover
   • Extensive coverage of the Leonard Cohen World Tour, both the one that took place in that vale of tears we call reality and the even better Tour that took place in the Heck Of A Guy universe.

   [↩]