Hello 2008!

It's time to review how my 2007 Resolution went and proclaim new ones for 2008...

My New Year's resolution for 2007 was to have a more interesting year. I broke down the resolution to several approaches...

• Try new activities. I claimed victory right off the bat because I started geocaching for the first time. However, I had 12 whole months to try something else new and I can't think of anything significant to add. Grade: C-
• Try something I would "normally never do". Sadly, I completely neglected this task. Grade: F
• Travel (preferably somewhere I've never been). Instead of going somewhere local for my yearly white water rafting trip, this year I organized a trip to Oregon. This was a fantastic trip! Grade: A
  
• Meet new people / Make new friends. I can't say that I made any new friends, though I did solidify stronger relationships with people I met in 2006. I also re-connected with old friends. I went to a reunion of college/fraternity friends and saw friends I haven't spoken to in many years. Also, thanks to social networking sites, I've "found" other old friends. Grade B+
• Be more colorful expressing myself. Other than this sentence, I've done squadouche. Grade: C
• Overall Grade: C
  

I am not pleased with my success in 2006, but I think my 2008 resolution might help. For 2008, I resolve to reduce input in order to be more productive. I find myself overwhelmed with information and ideas. There are just too many good things out there for you to digest them all. Yet I try, and my "things to do" list keeps getting bigger and bigger. Here are a few ideas about how I will accomplish this:

• Less couch/mouse potato - I plan to spend less time in front of the television/computer.
• Less magazines - My pile of unread magazines is growing rapidly. It's time to cancel some subscriptions.
• RSS is evil - I liked Lifehacker much better when there was only a post or so a day, now there are a gazillion. I have about 20 feeds related to science/engineering, free/open source software, and productivity (ironically) that I just can't keep up with. Some of them have got to go bye-bye.