A Beginner's Guide to Making Resolutions That Won't Get You Arrested. At Least on Felony Charges.

I have exactly one friend who hasn't broken any of his New Year's resolutions yet. He hasn't gotten around to making any yet, but that's beside the point. 

As I told you last week, I like the start of a new year.   It offers us a chance to examine our lives, assess our shortcomings, and then hope that they will magically disappear next year just because the calendar flips to a different page.

I'm as guilty of this kind of magical thinking as anyone. I write 7 to 10 goals for each year and am lucky if I accomplish half of them by the time year's done. I'm especially lucky to accomplish half of them if I happen to write down 7 or 9, because accomplishing half of a goal is much harder than doing a whole one.

Of course, it's easy to read 10 books if your goal is to read 20. But if your goal is to be elected President, try accomplishing half of that!  (No really, I'm serious. You should run for President. The Republicans need a decent candidate for their half of this race, and you can't be worse than Mitt Romney.  Even if you are a Democrat.  Actually, especially if you are a Democrat.)

But my central point is not to convince you to run for President.  It is to convince that it is really hard to win half of the American presidency.  If they wouldn't let Bush and Gore split it in 2000, then you are probably out of luck if that is one of your goals for this year. 

You should think of something else.

Which is exactly why I'm here. 

You come to this space for inspiration and direction for your life. (God help you.)  Or possibly you come to this space because you typed some words into a search engine that sounded a bit like the title of this post, and my friends at Google played a cruel trick on you. 

Either way, I'm here to help. 

To be good at goal-making, you should start by thinking about what you would like your life to look like at this time next year, and what goals you need to accomplish to make that happen. Next, you must determine how many of these results can only be achieved through grossly illegal means, and eliminate the two or three of these on which you are most likely to be apprehended. 

If any of your goals still remain at that point, you should write them down.  If you wrote down your initial unedited list, you should also be sure to shred it immediately. 

If any of your surviving goals were also on your list the previous two years and went unfulfilled, you should also get rid of these.  This serves the important purpose of improving your resolution-completition percentage, because -- let's be honest -- you aren't going to fulfill them this year either. 

Stop kidding yourself. 

Anyway, at this point you should have whittled your list of resolutions down to a manageable set of non-felonious desires at which you have not repeatedly failed.  That's a good start. 

If even that list still seems too intimidating, you can delete some of the more difficult goals and add some easily accomplishable things such as: "Read more of Andrew Smith's blog;" "Read more of Andrew Smith's sports columns;" or "send Andrew Smith money in the mail at regular intervals." These small goals are easy to maintain, and will improve your self-confidence as you work your way up to accomplishing your greatest dreams.

Which you most certainly will. 

Unless your name is Mitt Romney.