I penned my 2017 Resolutions during an 11-hour transit in Hong Kong back in January. I didn’t have any notebook with me, so I had to write them down on a scrap paper.

Sitting by a glass wall that overlooks the tarmac, illuminated by the setting sun, it was one of those light bulb moments when words just flow. I was hopeful. Not unlike the sun that set shortly after, however, my resolutions that it fueled soon died out.

Here’s how it happened and how I restarted my resolutions back to life in three essential steps.

My quarter-life crisis played a huge role in killing off my New Year’s resolutions. It made me believe I was stuck and any effort to get better, futile. The scrap paper containing said resolutions thus lay untouched on my desk, while I continued plummeting into a downward spiral. My 25th birthday came and went by unceremoniously in February; the supposed milestone changed nothing in my state of mind.

Until one morning in March, I woke up feeling better. Lighter. I didn’t know why or how but I could feel the clouds in my head starting to dissipate.

On the very same day, I went to the nearest book store to get some art supplies. I transferred my almost-forgotten New Year’s resolutions onto a piece of black art paper in silver ink, and hung it on the wall beside my bed.

Having my resolutions written down is like having a physical map in front of my eyes and being able to point to a specific destination. “That’s where I want to be. That’s where I will go.” It helped me feel that the life I envision is real and attainable, and in turn gave power to the vision to drive me forward.

That was the first essential step that rekindled my resolutions. I believe, that was also what truly kickstarted the second phase of my quarter-life crisis and gave me a growing sense that change was possible.

The second step had a lot to do with time.

While there are a lot of aspects of me that I still don’t quite understand, I am aware that: 1) my sense of time can be quite off, and 2) I can be quite the escapist, who regularly engages in mind-numbing activities such as scrolling down my social media feed.

Even when I know that I’m running out of time, for example to start getting ready for work, I often can’t bring myself to do it. I will stay immobile in bed while tricking my own mind into believing that there will be enough time to do what needed to be done, or that I can do it faster.

Of course most of the time that isn’t true and a lot of things, especially in my personal life, get put off because of it.

That’s why I included “tracking how I use my time” among my 2017 goals. I wanted to be aware of how much time I took to do something. From those as mundane as taking a bath, those more productive like exercising and doing my job, to those that potentially waste too much of my precious time like checking social media.

To do so, I used an app called “ATracker“, which allowed me to record time used for specific activities, label them accordingly, and produce charts to see how these activities are distributed across a day or a week.

I then used the data to come up with a daily schedule on my Apple calendar, so it can remind me to do a particular activity. For instance, when it’s time to have lunch, I will get a pop-up notification across all my Apple gadgets, reminding me to stop working.

Some people may find this annoying, but I find it very helpful to jolt me out of whatever I’m doing and make time for the important things.

The last key step that made it possible for me to restart my New Year’s resolutions was to keep a bullet journal. It is a wonderful organization system that allows me to manage different to-do lists — from daily to more long-term, monthly ones; jot down ideas and inspirations whenever they come to me; track my habits; and write short diary entries all in one place.

The element that I find most helpful from this journaling system, especially when it comes to keeping myself accountable of my resolutions, is the ability to break down big goals for a year, into smaller, monthly objectives, and into even smaller, daily steps. Not to mention, the ability to cross them off when I complete them. It brings me constant positive reinforcement to keep to my targets with grit.

To recap, these are the three key steps I took to reawaken my dying New Year’s resolutions:

1. Write them down and put them somewhere visible as a constant reminder
2. Be aware of how I use my time and use the knowledge to do it better
3. Break big goals down into smaller steps that I can keep track of and cross off for positive reinforcement

A bonus pointer for you who make it this far: let’s be extra kind to ourselves. Instead of making my New Year’s resolutions all about success or failure, I approach them as a way to learn more about my outlook on life. My strengths, my shortcomings, which goals get done so quickly because they’re my current priorities, and those whose deadlines I keep postponing. Sure, sometimes I’m just lazy… but some other times, it turns out I keep putting them off because I don’t consider them as important anymore.

And that’s all right.

 

Credits:

Photographs by Ehud Neuhaus, Manu Schwendener, Alona Kraft, Lukas, Danist Soh