ornoth | Friday Five #49

Sigh. The predictability hurts us.

What was your biggest accomplishment this year?: Probably the thing I’m most proud of is succeeding at raising $3,555 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through my participation in this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge ride. Other noteworthy accomplishments include biking up several hills, including Evans Notch, Great Blue Hill, Mount Wachusett, South Uncanoonuc, and Pack Monadnock; the progress I’ve made getting back into writing for DargonZine; and my exploration of Buddhism.
What was your biggest disappointment?: Oddly, the PMC also provides my biggest disappointment of the year, when I crashed out of the event and had to go to the hospital to get stitches. My other cycling disappointment was bonking hard on the way back from a ride to Gloucester. I was also disappointed in that I only had enough submissions to send out five issues of DargonZine this year, and we lost several of our veteran writers and my close personal friends, including Victor, Pam, Bryan, Stu, and Rhonda.
What do you hope the new year brings?: The obvious and biggest desire is a new job. Other than that, I hope that the DargonZine crew can finish up the big story arc we began writing at the 2003 Summit, so that I have it to print this year.
Will you be making any New Year's resolutions? If yes, what will they be?: I don’t think so. I just finished making two birthday resolutions (regular Buddhist meditation, and transitioning to skim milk), so I don’t think I need additional resolutions. Maybe I’ll eat a little less red meat, since that would probably be the next logical step in improving my diet, but I don’t think that’s big enough to make it a resolution.

I will say that I find it disappointing that although people always ask what new resolutions you’re making, they absolutely never ask how well you kept your old ones. As someone with some actual strength of will, I find it sad that most people fail to control themselves and honor their commitments. I think I’ve kept all my resolutions for the past three years (and they haven’t been “gimmes” at all).
What are your plans for New Year's Eve?: I was thinking maybe I’d go to the Lizard Lounge to see Flynn, but probably I’ll stay home. I haven’t bothered cultivating many friends, and I’m so not the party type.

I will say that I find it disappointing that although people always ask what new resolutions you’re making, they absolutely never ask how well you kept your old ones. As someone with some actual strength of will, I find it sad that most people fail to control themselves and honor their commitments. I think I’ve kept all my resolutions for the past three years (and they haven’t been “gimmes” at all).

I usually do look back. I think people also don't make good resolutions. A resolution is a goal, and a goal should be something achievable and measurable, with a specific plan. People say "I want to lose weight" but have no plan about how to do it. And then the next year they are the same (or a few pounds heavier). I wouldn't say, "I want to build an e-mail system" and then not have a detailed plan on how to do it. So, yeah. Most resolutions fail because they're not specific enough.

For instance, what is "regular" meditation? Daily? Weekly? "at least weekly"? how can you measure your progress? Does it mean getting into the habit? What if you meditate daily for 6 months and realize it's not for you, or just "get busy", and by the end of the year, you're not meditating. But you did regular meditation. . .so does it count?

As for reducing red meat.. well, just repeat this several times a day - "Mad Cow, Mad Cow, Mad Cow!" I know you don't watch tv, but perhaps you have seen on some internet news report that they found a case of Mad Cow disease in Seattle in the last few days. ::shudder:: You know, just switching to organic meat or "all natural/no added chemicals" would 'improve your diet' because you'd be reducing a lot of extra additives and bovine growth hormones, et. al.

Well, I’m really not that concerned about the chemical and hormone content. I’m a little concerned about BSE, just because, like HIV, its incubation period is long enough to allow an outbreak to spread unchecked for years. But the biggest factor in my consideration is simple nutrition. Most Americans far exceed their protein needs, and red meats are fattier than white. Now that I’m taking my cycling seiously, I’m particularly concerned about my fat intake, which is also the reason for some of my previous years’ resolutions (cutting down on cheese, ice cream, whole milk, et cetera).

I agree, but only to a point. At the consultancy I used to work for, we were all about quantifying goals and plans and measuing our performance. Those are sometimes useful techniques, particularly when you have a large, complex project and don’t trust the people doing the work to tell you the truth.

But that method also comes with its own weaknesses. By establishing measurement criteria, you make achieving the criteria the goal, which can distract you from your true goal. Sometimes you can meet your criteria for success, but fail to actually achieve the objective that it was meant to accomplish. Other times you accomplish the goal, but fall short of the measurement criteria. You’ve accomplished a significant weight loss, but (if I remember right) you fell a pound or two short of your end of year goal; does that mean you failed, or succeeded?

I find setting up measurement criteria is usually too binary for me. In the real world, there’s often no single inflection point between success and failure. There is a huge, broad spectrum between abject failure and complete success, and I trust myself to have the integrity to know where on that spectrum my performance lies. And I usually find it preferable to focus on my real goal than on some arbitrary number that may poorly model my goal.

Of course, some goals lend themselves to measurement, and in many cases it’s important to have a reference point you can manage to and talk about, but I generally find that’s a more artificial setup than simply accepting that there are relative degrees of success.

Friday Five #49

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