Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet
By Jason Zweig | Dec. 29, 2017 10:30 am ET
Don’t resolve to do something so easy it doesn’t require a resolution, nor something so hard no resolution could make it achievable. Resolutions are for raising the bar, not for laying the bar on the ground and hopping over it or for putting the bar too high for anyone to reach.
Make all your resolutions in public. The fear of social pressure, whether it materializes or not, will help you keep your word, since you are pledging not just to yourself but to others.
Listening to what someone else is saying without hearing what you already think is one of the hardest challenges for the human mind. When you listen, listen as if your life depends on it. Otherwise, you’ll just hear your own words coming out of someone else’s mouth.
Say “I don’t know” at least 10 times a day. That will disqualify you for a career in politics but make you a better person.
Introduce yourself to all the people at your job whom you see every day but haven’t met yet. Stop pretending there’s something on your phone that’s preventing you from stepping outside yourself — even if they’re doing the same thing.
Learn something interesting every day; learn something surprising every week; learn something shocking every month.
One way or another, even the people who insult you help pay your salary. Treat them with respect.
Most of what passes for modesty in this world is just posturing meant to elicit praise. There is no such thing as humility; there is only realism about how much of your life you owe to luck. Always keep that foremost in your mind, and people will think you are humble.
Don’t forget to ask to see the baby pictures.
Be more judgmental about ideas and less judgmental about people.
Get outside more — a lot more.
Don’t laugh at things you don’t understand. Take the time and trouble to understand them first. Most likely, you will find that once you understand them, they either become even funnier than you thought in the first place, or not funny in the least.
Own your mistakes; lend your successes. They will come back, with interest.
Get home 15 minutes earlier. It will make you 15 minutes more efficient the next day.
Remember that to describe a cognitive bias is to commit it. When you learned about confirmation bias, did you bother trying to find any research purporting to disprove it? Exhorting other people not to be overconfident is, by implication, a way of declaring that you aren’t overconfident. If you are right about them, you are therefore probably wrong about yourself.
Call your mom.
Forget about getting better at what’s easy for you. Get better at what’s hard for you.
If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you must not have talked to everybody in the room yet.
Don’t just cerebrate; celebrate.
Stop walking with your phone in your hand all the time. Look up and see how strange and beautiful the world is.
Never try to get other people to change their minds without first trying to understand why they think the way they do. Never do that without being open to the possibility that the mind that might need to change the most could be your own.
Show, don’t tell.
Teach, don’t preach.
Work harder at making the familiar strange. Walk or drive a different route than your daily routine; work away from your desk; read something flamboyantly irrelevant; call someone you don’t need to call; look up at the sky instead of the concrete. When you turn back to your routine, it will feel freshened.
Eat more crow. It’s the most nutritious of all brain foods.
Befriend someone at least 20 years younger than you, and someone at least 20 years older than you. Each of you will make the other smarter and better.
Check your facts — again. There’s a mistake in there somewhere; you just haven’t found it yet.
Donate blood. Part of you will help save someone’s life, and you’ll never know who it is.
Try to take your work more seriously, and yourself less seriously. The more seriously you take your work, the easier it will become to take yourself less seriously; the constant reminders of your ignorance should never cease to amaze you.
When you’re having a bad day, call the closest friend you haven’t talked with in the longest time.
Get better at accepting compliments; despite all you know (and all they don’t know) about how the sausage was made, people still have a right to like what you did. And you have an obligation to thank them.
Tweet less; read more.
Talk less; listen more.
Say more: Use fewer words.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, http://on.wsj.com/2lsq4Vt
