New Year's Resolution

I welcomed 2018 with a sky full of fireworks around Lake Pichola in Udaipur. Brightly lit palaces, loud Bollywood music, serene waters and celebrations – all blended together to create a surreal experience. My mind raced back to exactly a year back, when I was on a beach on Phuket, with thousands of revellers from across the world, looking at another set of fireworks. A new year is a time of many emotions, but one that stands out is hope. The hope of a new beginning, to be more precise. This hope often manifests itself as a new year’s resolution. Expectedly, the internet around this time is flooded with memes about new year’s resolutions that people make and then abandon within a few weeks.

Why such resolutions fail is understandable. Having studied economics, the analogy with the time inconsistency problem is obvious. No matter what I today commit to, in future I will react primarily  to the incentives that I face on that day. This is not to belittle human resolve, but a resolve that is opposed to incentives will be difficult to keep. Therefore, I believe that a new year’s resolution should meet a few criteria. Firstly, it should be something that one cares about deeply, on a daily basis. This will give confidence that future preferences are not very different from today’s. Second, one must actively think about ways to create incentives to naturally achieve the resolution. The more the disincentives, the harder adherence will become. Thirdly, it should be something intensely personal. A publicly-declared resolution which eventually fails can undermine one’s self-confidence. I believe that positive reinforcement is important to lead a good life.

This thinking around resolutions drew from my experience of the last year. While I was in Phuket, I had once again fallen ill and felt that I should lead a healthier lifestyle. This was not on a whim, but reflected years of sporadic exercising. When I came back to Bangalore, I began exercising twice a day, four or five days a week. I experimented with different exercise patterns, different gyms and different times till I found my rhythm. Even now, I keep changing the mix to keep things interesting. I began eating more healthy things. I brought back the morning cup of hot milk, drew from the fruit basket at work, added curd and generally reduced over-eating. I experimented with different foods in different ways, at different times of the day. It’s been a great learning experience about continuous improvement. I don’t know if all of this has resulted in better physical outcomes, but I feel that I’m in a much better place mentally. I also feel quite proud to have kept a resolution.

I look forward to making a new resolution for 2018 and trying to keep it. I look forward to a year of experimentation and getting to know myself better. I’m quite full of hope and raring to go!