That poor word ‘resolutions’, the moment it is paired with ‘New Year’s’ it becomes trite and cliched. Particularly, because those New Year’s Resolutions often don’t last very long – especially that one to go the gym regularly

Still, one should make plans and set goals for Improving oneself. So here I go making promises to myself and hoping that I can achieve even half of them. In order to make life easier and keep my promises in the forefront of my mind, I have sectioned my goals into 3 categories; improving my mind, body and future.

Number 1 – Improving my Mind.

This shouldn’t be too difficult and comes down to managing my time. I have always been quite cerebral and genuinely love learning. Now I just have to concentrate my efforts on taking appropriate enriching online courses. I will therefore, continue with my favourite MOOC site Coursera and focus my efforts on courses that will benefit my career and side projects.

Then I need to find time to read. For the first time in a few years, I did not meet my reading target for 2016 on Goodreads, so with my other activities and responsibilities, I have adjusted my target to a more realistic number.

The hard part of improving my mind this year is going to be getting that PMP certification. It’s definitely not going to happen until the latter part of the year and may even be pushed to early 2018 but I can certainly start studying this year *fingers crossed.

Number 2 – Improving My Body.

Oh, this is hard. Last year I joined the gym for the first time. It was exciting, I bought some workout gear and was actually enjoying myself. It was incredible when I saw myself improving as I did pushups for the first time ever. I seriously wanted to workout every day. However, I got mega Busy with work, started eating poorly and an old illness pretty much landed me in the hospital, twice in the last 6 weeks of the year. Now I am not healthy enough for rigorous exercise so I am trying to follow my doctor’s advice – taking my medication, going for my visits and eating the right things but I’ll probably still have to have surgery this year

My focus then is on eating healthy, which is not a big deal as I’ll cook when I’m not too busy and even when I’m busy I have a number of healthy food places that I will order from. I’m will also be trying my luck with cooking new cuisines this year, mainly Asian food and will be visiting the Asian market asap – yea me

For exercise, I am going to try yoga – finally. Well, not try for the very first time as I have followed along with a few videos before, but actually go to a yoga class. Should be fun

Number 3 – Improving My Future.

Now it’s big guns time and the bit that I often neglect. The most important thing for me this year in planning for my future is encapsulated in one word – SAVINGS. I am a horrible spendthrift and at 34 years old, still haven’t figured out how to save properly. My pattern is generally to save for a bit, then make a big purchase that depletes said savings I had such big plans for this last year and failed so miserably. Now I am dead serious, I will make this happen, I will develop a routine and I will increase the amounts I save each month. This time next year I have to be looking at a tidy sum.

So that’s it I guess, all in all, my 2017 aspirations should be doable and with a little luck I just might achieve them all