A New Year, New Resolutions

This year's resolutions...

Too often, the setting of goals and the selection of New Year's Resolutions are undertaken with the aim of being a different person or living a different life. That's very nice, but there needs to be a connection between point A and point B. To put it another way, if the point of life is in the journey, not the destination, then personal, professional and educational development need to focus not only on where you want to be, but how you're going to get there.

For a long-term goal to be met, a series of short-term goals must be met that build toward it. The problem with the New Year's Resolution is that we tend to make the long term goal with a whole year before us and don't create the short term goals that will a) help us succeed and b) give us those little successes that motivate us toward the larger goal. So, for the first six months of the year, you postpone since there's plenty of time and for the last six months you let resolutions drop because you ran out of time. That's definitely what happened to me last year: I had some success with the languages I was actively engaged with anyway and let drop the others.

The other killer with the long-term goal is that it has to make sense in terms of who you are and what you want to do with your life. Ideally, a resolution or long term goal should be able to be rephrased thus: If I succeed in doing X, it will allow me to do Y. (And without the formulation being tautological: "If I learn German, I will be able to speak German" is no good. "If I learn Mandarin, I can transfer to our company's Beijing office and get a promotion" is better.)

By having resolutions that are a) "chunkable" - divisible into short term goals and b) in line with larger goals or life improvements, your odds at success are better.

This year's resolutions are oriented toward better communication with colleagues, greater enjoyment of literature, better use of resources in the community and, well, one not so practical goal:

1) French: I devoted considerable years to it, my colleagues speak it and so I will be working to maintain and rebuild it through reading, music and conversation.

2) Spanish: A lot of colleagues speak it and so I use it a lot. I'd like to speak it correctly.

3) Italian: Long term, I would like to better enjoy Calvino and Eco. Short term, I'd like to converse more easily.

4) Mandarin: I'd like to be able to go to the Chinese shops in the area and manage more than the formalities in Mandarin.

5) Breton: This one, I know, is impractical. But I truly loved my time in Bretagne and would like to get in touch with its mythical past. I'm not, by the way, shooting for fluency, just an acquaintance with the language.

6) My language goals are tied to progress and enjoyment in the language, not particular methods or courses. On the one hand, failing to finish a book won't count as failure. On the other hand, completing a program without actually improving my skills won't count as success.

I'll have more to say on the specifics of my language plans, to start, in the near future.