That's Right, You Woodchuck Chuckers...

It's GROUNDHOG DAY!

And it marks, as of today, the New Year according to Chris Jones. I never liked New Year's Eve for making resolutions, or the first week of the New Year, either, as it always is far too hectic for me. Resolutions that come in the first blush of "here's what everyone else is doing" do not seem to me to be lasting. And research shows that they're not. I need a month to think about all the great stuff I'm going to do and be and all that. By Groundhog Day, I know what I am and am not really committed to.

This is important, because I want very badly to improve. If you're looking for some critique of resolutions as a waste of time, you won't find it here; I fall somewhere in the middle between "take me as I am" and "I can transform my life in 5 minutes by following Tony Robbins' System of the Week." If one does not resolve to improve, one's improvement will be slower and more erratic than it might be. Most people improve by default, but they don't do so very fast or in the most important ways. I have no truck with that.

What I needed was a way to consistently improve that really works, and I have discovered a very simple one. This next is NOT a unifying theory, so don't get all excited, but this stuff works for me.

The genesis of my system is, in fact, partly based on the movie Groundhog Day, an incredibly underrated film with profound ideas embedded in it. We've always liked the film just for the film's sake, and we watch it every year on February 2, but about a decade ago I started seeing things in the film that were worth serious contemplation. Then a couple years ago while watching the scene where Rita and Phil are sitting on the bed throwing cards into the hat, I caught a throwaway line that hit me where it hurt. Rita is lamenting that she sucks at throwing cards, and says it will take her forever to learn to do it. Phil, who has a much better concept of just how long forever is, says no, six months, seven to eight hours a day will do it. And then she says, "so is this what you do with eternity?"

Well, is it? Am I doing anything with eternity - because, folks, that's what we have to work with - that is any better than what Phil did? I mean, at least he learned to throw cards into a hat. I know people that have learned less than that. Often I could say that I'm one of those people, and in that moment I resolved to change that. The resolution sort of stuck. Sort of. The desire remains, even if the daily performance occasionally lacks. But I've done some things to try to improve that.

First, I discarded all my planners and complicated to-do lists, including on-line ones. Remember the Milk is great, but not for me. What I use is a 3x5 card. I get a blank white one, write the date at the top, then start listing the things I need to do. I do this at night, before I go to bed, for the next day. The day before the card date, only one column is allowed - I have to start the day with no more than one column of stuff. If I have more than that, I have to delete something. The next day, the card date, I carry the card with me and add to it - there are always things to add - but in no case can it go beyond 2 columns, one side of the card. At the end of the day, undone items get transferred to the new card, but that can only happen twice. The third day, they get deleted. If I have not written the card to Aunt Marge in three days of knowing I should do it, then I'm going to face the fact that I won't do it, and delete the task.

I've added to this system things that work for me. For instance, I have an "I really should do that" list of things I can plug in if I have a light day. Top of that list right now is get a mouthpiece for my trumpet. One day I will, but it's not on my list of things I have to do today. So that's my daily system.

Second, my calendar is online and in only one place. I do have to have a calendar, and I put on it things that are critical to remember. I have to schedule, or I can't get enough done during the day for me to be happy. The Google calendar I use is accessible and viewable by my entire staff, so they know where I am and they can schedule things for me if necessary. It updates automatically in real time. Nice tool, works well for me. I fill it up every Sunday night and print it and hang it on the wall at home so Jeanette can see what's going on with me and make changes if she wants to. Her stuff comes first.

Third, and most critically, I discovered that for me, all the great tools in the world will do me no good if I do not internally want to do better. The more often I feel like that, the more changes I can make. Since the real me does want, very badly, to change for the better, I need to be in better contact with the real me. The best way to do that is to be where the real me is easiest to access, to hang with people that make me want to be better, and to read books about people I want to be like (fiction and nonfiction). Therefore, I started going to the temple much more often. Not once a month. Every week, once at a minimum, and often as much as three times. I began praying much harder and much longer and much more often. Reading the scriptures more. Reading the talks from General Conference between April and October (and vice-versa).

NOTE: this is not because there's some box I felt like I wasn't checking. Lists of gospel "to-do's" are not going to get you into Heaven. But to remain true to myself, to become my best self, I had to have closer contact with the Spirit and I had to start hanging out with people in places that made me better. Without that, my resolve to be better waxed and waned unpredictably. It wasn't until I got serious about being where my best self was at home that I started to make real progress.

Fourth, and this is where we come full circle, I stopped making huge lists of things I was going to improve on. No, that's not exactly right. I still make those lists. But now, instead of believing that I can change all those things immediately, or even that I should be able to do so, I know I have limited capacity - really limited - and that I better focus on one or two things. Problem was, I didn't know which of those things I was truly willing to focus on. So I began making the huge list in January, then seeing which of those things on the list I actually was willing to put on my daily card and do. Some I was. Some I wasn't. By February, I know which are which. So today, the first day of the New Year, I'm making the following resolutions:

1. I will be happy more often.

2. I will be out of the box toward my family.

3. I will plan and execute a garden that produces 50% more than last year using state-of-the-art large gardening techniques.

4. I will do 10 loans per month, every month.

5. We, as a family, will be out of all non-mortgage debt by December.

That will do for now. I'm still flirting with playing the piano and losing another 10 pounds, running a formal 10k and writing a short story every month, cataloguing all my books and reading the Qu'ran. But I can't commit to those things just now. They go back on the shelf.

That's what I'm doing with eternity. How about you?