This is a blog that should have been out much earlier in the day… or rather in the year but taking the adage of ‘Better Late than Never’, I have gone ahead and put this together even now.The thought for this blog came to me when I was hearing a number of people talking about their New Year resolutions and how they can’t sustain it and it gets broken every year.
I sat back and thought that I don’t want to make any resolutions, which when broken have no meaning left to them and then you miss out on the rest of the months, waiting for the next year to return, to start with the same set or new resolutions once again. But yet, I wanted to put some goals for myself for this year so that I could push myself to achieve those.
That is when I thought that a resolution gets broken only when you put a constraint or leash on yourself (Eg. – I shall not eat pizzas – Broken as soon as you enjoy one slice of it or I shall exercise daily – Once again broken the day you miss one of the days of workout). I said to myself ‘What if this was flipped around and I put a goal for the year, which cannot get broken because the more I do it, the more I gain out of it?’.
This helped me in putting a clear strategy for myself and I put a framework, which I call:
The Four Es for 2012: Exploration, Experiences, Extraction and Entertainment
This is how this approach works:
1.Exploration: The idea is to venture out and see new places/new cities/new countries and explore
India/world.
2.Experiences: This is all about coming out of the comfort zone and trying out new experiences of life. It could be a new adventure, a new skill, a new course. As long as it is something I have not done before, it will go as part of the experience.
3.Extraction: Instead of putting reading as one of the goals, I have broadened the concept and put extraction as the objective. This would then allow it to mean reading, writing, blogging and surfing.
4.Entertainment: This one is pretty simple. This is all about movies, videos, TV Shows and the works. There are quite a few old movies and seasons to catch as well, so that gets covered here.
What is very interesting, which I realized after putting this together was that each of these Es are interlinked in some way or the other. While I am indulging or achieving one of the Es, there is a strong chance that in some way, the other E is also getting achieved. For eg. – If I am exploring a new city and I try out a new dish, it also means that I am experiencing something new.
Furthermore, there is no fear of this getting broken during the course of the year because the more I do any of the Es, the more I enjoy and gain and hence there is no fear of this getting broken.
The only hitch that I see is that to follow this approach of Four Es, I need to indulge in one more E and that E is the E of Expenditure! But that is the harsh reality so without bothering much about that, I would just say ‘Let’s do Eeet!’
