METRIC RESOLUTIONS: MEASURING SUCCESS

I'm not much of a believer in NY resolutions but I've made a few over the years.

It happened I was looking at some of them today. This happened not for any deep, philosophical reason but because I decided to clean out a drawer where most of them were stored. It was kind of amusing, but also instructive.

If I'm honest with myself the ones where I succeeded were a number: Saved X much money, Spent X days in San Diego, practiced putting X days, went to the gym X days, got my handicap to X number, donate X hours of charitable time, Took X hours of advanced college work, attended X number of days Continuing Legal Education. There was one other thing that tended to make me more successful on some than others. The ones that I did best at were out where I could see them often.

Thus in an exercise of gradualism, I made five modest resolutions, all measurable by a number and all in the front of my little, homemade planner where I see them virtually daily. As an added twist, I put them in popup mode on my internet calendar, too. I'm reminded of one of them a day, the first time I look at my calendar in its little webhost page.

We'll see how I come out in about a year.