The first two weeks of January are defined by resolutions. You either have a few of them or you spend your time around the water cooler explaining how worthless and commercialized they’ve gotten. If you’re going to have to talk about them, you might as well do it correctly. I’ve come to the grand conclusion that the reason few of us ever complete our resolutions is because we’re doing it completely wrong.

A search for “New Year’s resolutions” on Google returns 24.5 million hits. Every blog I know of, regardless of niche, seems to have a few ideas on how to make 2010 the best year ever. Most of the ideas are tired regurgitated material from 1983 productivity books. Here’s why most of them are wrong.

1. Forget the date.
The right way to make changes in your life doesn’t have anything to do with where the earth is in its path around the sun. So blow January off completely. That’s right. For you and me January 1st means nothing but a day off after a night of too many martinis in a tuxedo. The first of the year is a horrible time to make major life changes. There are too many tasks left over from Christmas and days off work to dedicate any real time to change. Besides how long is running five miles a day going to last in January?

Set your own beginning of the year. February 1st, Chinese New Year, whatever and then use the time between now and then to really think about what you want to change in your life. Use the extra days to sort through all the information that’s bombarding you right now about personal growth. Its going to take me at least two weeks to wade through all the posts I’ve starred in Google Reader on resolutions and productivity since Christmas. If the new year is the source of your motivation, your resolutions will only last as long as the year feels new. So slow down and think about your choices long enough to get excited about the possibilities. Your determination has a lot more to do with the outcome you’ve defined than anything else.

2. Know thyself.
If you have ADD don’t make OCD type resolutions. Goals need to be positive but if your resolutions are borderline miraculous you are going to fail. I have a very mild case of Genu valgum or knock knees. Its not enough you would notice if you met me, but it makes running harder than it would be normally. Setting a goal to run a certain distance or even a certain number of days a week for me would be silly. Why choose a goal I’m physically predispositioned against? But that doesn’t mean to avoid all resolutions in your problem areas. I can walk or bicycle just fine, and I can backpack you into the ground. I’m not saying I shouldn’t or won’t run this year. I just won’t use it as one of my measurements of success.

3. One thing at a time sounds nice, but no one lives that way.
The trick to change is not the massive overhaul of one part of your life at a time. Diets are an excellent example of that. Everyone has a friend who’s gotten serious about weight loss, made dramatic changes to their lifestyle, had amazing success, and then gained the weight back or more later in the year. Some of this is because of fad dieting, but a lot of this is actually because people who devote total concentration to one part of their life in order to change it are teaching themselves how to live with one goal at a time. They’re literally teaching themselves how to ignore life in order to exceed in their area of choice. If your goal is to build a new house, a goal with a definite beginning and end with little need for lifestyle change after its complete, then fine. But most of goals aren’t like that. Productivity, family issues, health, or spiritualism are all going to require a change that results in a permanent habit. It has to be able to survive while a thousand other things are going on. So instead of dropping all other changes and teaching yourself into failure, pick 6 or 7 things and then start really small. If your resolution is to read Shakespeare then start with a sonnet a day, if you want to improve your health start by drinking a glass of water a day and increase it a bit until you get to the prescribed eight over some time. Its hard to get burned out on your new fitness resolution when it takes about 10 minutes a day.

So make your New Year’s resolution to make some goals… In a few weeks… Make a lot of them… Just make them really small.

I’ll let you in on mine in the days ahead.