As the world celebrated the end of 2009, I was watching the Google countdown on my iPhone with 30 to 40 of my newest friends. In amongst the cheering and embracing, people were asking each other the age-old question, “What are your new year’s resolutions?”

Personally, I’ve never taken my resolutions very seriously, and as a result I have rarely achieved them. Like most people I’m sure, there are always so many things that I want to do but time just seems to pass with nothing to show for it. In 2010 I want things to be different. I want to be watching Google’s 2010 count down (hoping for something better than a dodgy JavaScript animation!), and be able to say that I’ve made the most of my year. As with most problems in my life, I turned to the internet in search for some tips. Whoa. I was completely overwhelmed! There are entire web sites dedicated to helping you meet your goals filled with advertising and propaganda. Instead, I’ve come up with this (yes another!) list of tips that I’m going to follow:

1. Be realistic. You can’t learn to fly just by flapping your arms. Set goals that you know are possible to achieve even if they will take some hard work. Aiming too high will only set you up for failure when you jump off a second story building and plummet to the ground.
2. Set clear and specific goals. You need to be clear about what you plan to achieve. There’s no point saying that you’ll save money without specifying how much you plan to put away. Break the time frame into smaller chunks, so that you can track your progress at regular intervals.
3. Spread the word. Not only will this keep you honest about your resolutions, but you may find other people doing the same thing. Support from friends is beneficial, as is the threat of mockery from people you dislike.
4. Keep your resolutions visible. Create a chart, graph, or diagram that depicts your progress. Us tech types love to collect data and display it in occasionally useful ways. These charts keep our goals in mind, and remind us when we’ve been naughty.
5. Re-evaluate your goals. On a regular basis check how you’re going. If you’re easily meeting your goals, maybe step it up a level. If you’re falling behind you should get yourself into gear and stop making excuses! Otherwise go back and change your original blog entry to make it seem like you’re on track.

So now that I’ve procrastinated with this list of tips, here’s what I hope to achieve in 2010:

• Start writing a blog. That blog of course is this blog! I’ve talked about writing one for the past year and have found every excuse not to. I spent months coming up with a custom engine and theme without actually writing any content. So I’ve scrapped it all, created a blank WordPress theme, and I’m starting to post. I’ll slowly work on the design over time, but content is the number one goal. Now for the specific part, I will write 4 to 6 posts a week for the next 12 months. I’m going to commit to that schedule to give myself the best chance of being successful.
• Become fit and healthy. As with most developers, 8 to 12 hours a day in front of a computer screen isn’t the best for my health. Mostly my diet is pretty good, as I do a lot of cooking with plenty of fresh fruit and veg, but I definitely don’t get enough physical exercise. As a minimum, I am going to do 30 minutes of continuous exercise everyday. It doesn’t count if I walk 15 minutes to work in the morning and back in the afternoon, it has to be in a single block. I’m not going to fuss over the type of exercise because anything is better than what I do now.
• Play the piano. I’ve only had a few formal lessons, but I’ve been teaching myself to play it for the last decade. My enthusiasm has dwindled lately, and I haven’t even plugged in the piano since moving into my current house. I don’t want to become a virtuoso, but I’d like to become more fluent. Every night that I spend at home I’ll turn it on and play for a good 15 minutes. Eventually I’ll try to learn some new songs, but for now I’ll just frustrate my girlfriend with the same 3 in a loop.
• Develop an open source application. I want to write a single open source application that gets at least 10 users outside of my family. This goal is light on specifics as I don’t really care what it is, what language it’s written in, or how complicated the task. I want to get the experience of managing a project with real world users, bug reports and feature requests. I’ve got a big list of things I’d like to do, but I’m always on the lookout for more ideas. This is something I’ll definitely follow-up in future blog posts.

It’s a simple list, but hopefully achievable. Following my list of tips, I’ve scratched a few other resolutions that either weren’t achievable or that I couldn’t break down into clear and simple goals. I’ll be posting my progress on this blog, and will be doing my best to meet my 2010 resolutions. How are you planning to keep yours on track?