I must admit that I’ve never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t see the connection between the start of the Gregorian calendar cycle and vows of self-improvement. If there’s something I need to be doing to make life better for myself and my family, I shouldn’t be waiting until after the first of the year to do it. Similarly, the motivation to improve myself should come from within, not from the changing of my wall calendar. (Yes, I confess, I am one of those people whose “Master Appointment Calendar” is a paper calendar that hangs on the wall of my kitchen. It may be low-tech, but it works, and every month, I get a new pretty picture to look at, which is more than can be said of your Outlook or Google calendar app).
But I know a lot of people don’t see it that way. 38.5% of us make New Year’s Resolutions. Of those 38.5%, only 9% actually succeed. Why such a high failure rate? Because people don’t resolve to actually do anything tangible. Instead of identifying actions they can take to actually make their lives better, they set goals, and ones that are very hard to achieve. The three most popular New Year’s Resolutions are: “Exercise More”, “Eat Healthier”, and “Lose Weight”- all variations on the same general theme of “I want a more rockin’ body”. That’s all well and good, but these are not actual things you can just decide to do and make them happen. They are goals, not actions. They involve a series of hundreds, if not thousands of decisions and actions over a long period of time that require significant willpower. Again, there’s nothing wrong with having good and lofty goals like improving your physical health. But if you’re going to make New Year’s Resolutions, you should set yourself up to succeed by giving yourself a way to get an easy “W”. Resolve to do something that you have the power to actually make happen, not just put yourself on the road to a successful goal.
What is something you can do to improve things for you and your family? Well, you’re reading a blog from an Estate Planning Attorney, so it should come as no surprise to you that getting an Estate Plan would be my top suggestion. Having an Estate Plan will make things better and easier for your family later on, and you don’t need to count calories, reduce your carb intake, or do leg presses to make it happen. Just call me and I’ll take care of it for you. It’s about as easy a “W” as there is. You’ll be doing something that you know you need to do, and your family will be grateful for it later.
And while we’re on the subject of easy things you can do to make things better for yourself and your family, here are a few more suggestions:
– Replace the air filter in your home. These need to be changed periodically, either every six months or every year depending on your type of system. When I had my HVAC unit replaced several years ago, the installers put the new system up in my attic. Getting up in the attic to change the filter is a major pain in the butt, but I do it anyway.
– Clean your barbecue grill. We’re in Southern California. We can grill practically all year long, and I do. But if you don’t clean the grill periodically, the buildup will get incredibly gross, and when you run the grill, all that nastiness burns up and infuses your food with the remnants of everything you cooked on that grill the previous year. You don’t want to invite friends over for an outdoor barbecue and serve them hamburgers that taste like last year’s salmon patties. Clean the damn grill. And I’m not talking about just running a brush over the grates. You have to open up the thing up and get in there with some steel wool and cleanser if you really want to get all the disgusting schmutz out of your grill (and trust me, you do.)
– Replace the batteries in your smoke alarms. If your home smoke alarms run on disposable batteries, you should change them once a year whether they need them or not. If you don’t, the batteries are going to run out, and the alarm will start chirping. 9 times of of 10, this happens in the middle of the night, when you’re either sleeping or doing something else you’d prefer not be interrupted. So pick a day out the year (New Year’s Day is a good choice) to replace the smoke alarm batteries. (If, like me, you have these newer smoke alarms that have built-in “10 year” batteries that you supposedly never have to change, then I feel your pain. I have several of them and not one of them has lasted more than three years. Oh sure, the manufacturer will send you out a new replacement smoke alarm when that happens, but by then it’s too late because I’ve already been woken up in the middle of the night by the high-pitched chirps of the smoke alarm telling me that my supposed “10 year” battery is dying)
– Get rid of the crap in your garage that you’re never going to use again. If you’re like me, that’s probably at least half of the stuff in your garage.
Thank you for reading my blog and/or visiting my website. Have a Happy New Year.
ST