New Years' resolutions are for chumps. Setting goals is important, but setting them for an entire year (a) often makes them too ambitious and (b) gives you way too much time to slack off or forget about them. Instead, you should set goals for the end of this year. That puts the pressure on and makes them manageable. If a week and change is not enough time for you, you can make them January resolutions but no later than that.

At the start of December I resolved to cross something off my always growing to-do list every day and I was doing well on that pace until I got sick. However, my ultimate goal by the end of the year was to get it down to 5 items or less and I'm still capable of that.