2015: This is How I am avoiding Resolutions

Another year has dawned on us. Phone calls, emails, SMSes, Whatsapp messages wishing each other Happy New Year have been exchanged. 

Now step back and think. What is so special about the New Year? It is just a change of date in the calendar. The sun rose on 1st Jan in the same way as all the other days before that, the weather and the traffic out there is also the same. Even the shows on TV are the same ones!

So then what has changed? The New Year may not change any of these but what a New Year brings with it is something called HOPE. With the advent of the New Year comes a strong sense of optimism. The belief that things will change from here on is what comes to the mind of people. And it is all of these emotions that make one to put together a list of resolutions. Most of them are well aware that they are never able to stick to their resolutions for a pretty long time but yet, year after year, they persist and put together another list, only to get disappointed over the next few days/weeks or months. 

It’s been two years that I have been blogging about how I do not keep any resolutions but rather follow my own model of doing things through the year. The benefit of this model is that there is no disappointment of a resolution breaking. 

So then what are my plans for this year? Am I sticking to the same model or is there a new model that I have developed? I thought a lot about this and then realized that this E Model that I have developed for myself works perfectly for me and at this stage I should not let go of it. Maybe, I should enhance it further, which means retaining a few Es , removing a few and adding a couple of other. Like I had mentioned last year, this E Model is a dynamic model which will keep changing and evolving with each passing year. 

So with that, I once again present my E Model to all of you, with the hope that some of you may also use it and benefit from it:

1. Experience: There are lot of people who like collecting different kinds of things – stamps, coins, match boxes. I like to collect experiences and call myself ‘Collector of Experiences.’ I try and find opportunities to try new things which just make life more exciting and meaningful. At the start of last year, I jumped off a cliff to experience paragliding. Towards the end of the year, I got to experience watching two tennis legends playing live - Roger Federer and Djokovic playing a set against each other at the ITPL. This year also, I plan to try a few new experiences.

2. Exploration: Travel is an important part of my life. One has to have wanderlust in life to truly become an explorer. Travel and reading are the two biggest teachers of life. As long as you have these two teachers in your life, your learning will never stop. One of my personal goals every year is to visit and see atleast three new places. Even when I am travelling for work, I endeavor to check out a few interesting sites of the place that I am visiting. This year will bring its own set of travel diaries. 

3. Extraction: This is a big word. It means absorbing and learning new things either through reading, videos, work, training, etc. Extraction would also mean writing and blogging and extracting thoughts and stories from within. Last year was a slow year for extraction and the plan this year is to rectify that. 

4. Entertainment: All work and no play can make Jack a dull boy. Philosophy of life couldn’t be truer than this. There is so much of content that exists out there – movies, TV Series, YouTube videos, award winning ads. Amongst all the other things that I intend to do in 2015, keeping my entertainment quotient high will be clearly one of the priorities. 

5. Engagement: This is a new E that I am adding to this model. Social media has become an extension of our life and it is something that can’t be escaped. So the best way is to embrace it. But in 2015, I do not want to limit my engagement to the online world. I intend to engage with my friends and families in the offline world too. I will be taking initiatives of catching up with as many people as I possibly can and connecting with their lives once again. 

6. Evolution: This model is incomplete without the addition of Evolution to the model. While I get busy in new experiences and extracting more from the lessons of life, it is also important that I evolve as a person. This evolution has to be mental, physical, financial and intellectual. I would like to see my net worth and balance sheet evolving. I would like to see the log of my running kilometres evolving as well as my acts of empathy and kindness evolving. My relationship with my colleagues and my team should evolve towards a better side. 

Overall, I should evolve as a better human being and the true measure of this will only come from others and their opinion about me rather than my own opinion about myself. 

All of these elements of the E Model are going to be subjective in nature and I will have no way of appraising myself if I do not put down a tracker that is quantifiable and measures how I am doing against each of these elements. So a Tracker has been put in place. 

Before you decide to implement this model in your life, do note that there are two other Es that come as companions for this model – Expenditure and Execution. You cannot win with this model if you do not take the companions along! 

Looking forward to the ‘Exciting’ times ahead in 2015!

2012: A Year of Four Es

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!’