Post: Irresolutions

posts/2018-02-irresolutions.md

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+---
+title: "New Years's irresolution"
+description: "In which I set some intentions."
+slug: irresolutions
+date: 2018-02-04T21:26:48+00:00
+type: post
+tags:
+- Reflection
+- Mental health
+---
+
+{{% figure alt="Cloudy lakeside"
+class="main-illustration fr"
+src="/assets/images/posts/2018-02-04-irresolutions.jpg"
+attr="Photo by Andrew Hughes on Unsplash"
+attrlink="https://unsplash.com/photos/__iliPPO20g?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" %}}
+
+I've chosen not to make any specific resolutions this year; I’ve found that they just don’t work for me. Like many people, all I get is a sense of guilt when I inevitably fail to live up to the expectations I set myself at the start of the year. However, I have set a couple of what I’m referring to as “themes” for the year: touchstones that I’ll aim to refer to when setting priorities or just feeling a bit overwhelmed or lacking in direction.
+
+They are:
+
+1. Contribution
+2. Self-care
+3. Measurement
+
+I may do some blog posts expanding on these, but in the meantime, I've put together a handful of questions to help me think about priorities and get perspective when I'm doing (or avoiding doing) something.
+
+1. **What difference is this making?**
+    - *I feel more motivated when I can figure out how I'm contributing to something bigger than myself.*
+    - In society?
+    - In my organisation?
+    - To my friends & family?
+2. **Am I looking after myself?**
+    - *I focus a lot on the expectations have (or at least that I think others have) of me, but I can't do **anything** well unless I'm generally happy and healthy.*
+    - Is this making me happier and healthier? 
+    - Is this building my capacity to to look after myself, my family & friends and do my job?
+    - Is this worth the amount of time and energy I'm putting in?
+3. **Do I have evidence for this?**
+    - *I don't have to base decisions purely on feelings/opinions: I have the skills to obtain, analyse and interpret data.*
+    - Is this fact or opinion? What are the facts?
+    - Am I overthinking this?
+    - Can I put a confidence interval for this?