Tag: Resolutions

Welcome To Quitters Day

Remember those resolutions that you made on New Years day?

Today is the second Friday of January and this is the day known as “Quitters Day”.

Quitter’s Day is held on the second Friday in January. This year, it falls on January 10. The tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions began some 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians. For them, the year did not begin in January but in mid-March — on the first moon after the spring equinox. Quitter’s Day is set aside to recognize those who set new year goals and fail to achieve them — and to encourage and equip them to try again and ultimately succeed. Research has shown that people quit their resolutions for the year by the second Friday of January.

In 2019, extensive research was conducted by Strava — a social network for athletes — and it was found that approximately 80% of people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out by the second week of January. Making deductions from the available 800 million user-logged activities in that year, Strava even went on to predict that the second Friday of January was the fateful day when the motivations of most quitters begin to decline. The main areas of focus for resolutions involve exercise, eating habits, and weight loss.

New studies have found that about two-thirds of people abandon their New Year’s resolution within a month. One of the major problems with achieving new year resolutions is that those who set them are over-ambitious. People usually start with high levels of motivation, but as time progresses, the drive begins to wane. The key in achieving goals is to set short, medium, and long-term goals as opposed to one large unrealistic stretch goal. Starting small and staying consistent, and also pairing up with someone else to remain accountable and motivated, will lead to good results. The day is not one to make fun of those who set goals and quit, but one to ultimately inspire them to eventually achieve their goals despite all odds.

The key to not quitting something you started is to not just decide to do something but to be totally devoted to doing it. The second key is persistence, and the third is to get in with a group/club doing the same thing. According to research, these three things are winning recipes to keep going.

I do not have to worry for I will not quit because I do not make resolutions they are a waste of time and energy.

Are you one of the quitters?

Like anyone will admit to defeat.

Have a great weekend and as always….Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Social Media–A New Year’s Resolution

Many of us at the beginning of a new year make resolutions that we seldom keep…..and this year I have heard some say they want to try and wean themselves off of social media…

To that I say good luck.

I was not one of those people for I have absolutely no social media presents other than a blog….for me social media is where the brain goes to die…as an old fart I want my brain to keep working as long as it can.

It is the first Sunday of the New Year and I want to help as best I can so this is my first FYI for 2025.

Part of living on the modern internet is realizing that a social network just isn’t useful or fun anymore. The thing that you used to get from social media—friends, jokes, or information—have disappeared, generally replaced by some combination of rage, churn, and monetization schemes. 

Even knowing this, though, it can be hard to give up the habit of visiting Facebook, X, Instagram (or whatever network you still use) that’s been part of your life for years or even decades. Part of this is just human nature—we’re creatures of habit. Another part of this is that most social networks employ teams of brilliant psychologists and designers who work hard to make quitting as hard as possible. 

The good news? You can fight back, turning the tricks these companies use against you to your advantage. A new year is about to begin—resolve to stop spending time on a website that you hate. Here’s a few ways you can do that.

The companies that build social networks work hard to reduce friction—those moments of annoyance that might cause you to do something else. If a page takes a while to load, for example, you might decide to do something else instead.

Knowing about friction can help you train yourself to visit particular social networks less often: you just need to add some friction. If you tend to reflexively open a social network on your phone, for example, you could remove the icon for the social network from your phone’s home screen, meaning you’ll have to scroll through your list of apps in order to launch it. Or, to make things more annoying, you could uninstall the app entirely.

https://www.popsci.com/diy/how-to-quit-social-media/

I realize that an addiction is a hard mistress but if you are serious about the break then I hope this did help a bit to ease your recovery.

Have a wonderful Sunday….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”