A rubric for a New Year's resolution?

My wife was telling me about her New Year's resolution last night.

Immediately putting on my administrator's hat and told her it needed to be more specific and measurable. You can't just say, "Do x more." You need to provide yourself with specific times, days, and criteria.

Maybe a rubric would be helpful. Something like:

4. Exceeds resolution
3. Masters resolution
2. Working towards mastery of resolution
1. Just getting started on resolution

Of course, you'll want to replace the word "resolution" above with specific criteria.

My daughter was listening and said, "This is what I get for having teachers for parents."

OK. Maybe a rubric is taking it a bit far, but I guess it depends. If you're like me, dealing with a to-do-list addiction and incipient S.M.A.R.T. goal overdose, maybe the last thing you need is more check-boxes and rubrics. Maybe you need an anti-resolution, something like, I am going to stop making everything into a check-list, spreadsheet, or rubric.

I've had a page in my bullet journal for a couple of weeks now entitled: "Stop Doing List." I read about it online somewhere. I'm supposed to make a list of things I should stop doing, so that I'm not so busy and distracted by things that crowd out my priorities. Unfortunately, I haven't thought of anything to put on it yet.

Sometimes I think I need to quit doing to-do-lists, like James Altucher suggests in his thought-provoking post, TO-DO LISTS ARE RUINING THE PLANET!

Maybe I need to stop trying to quantify everything.

No, that can't be right. Quantification is not the problem. Maybe I just need to be smarter about it: Shorter lists. Fewer goals.

The "one word resolution" idea making the rounds on the web is interesting. Maybe mine should be "fewer."

Now let's quantify that...