Are You Planning to Make a New Year’s Resolution?

As the current year draws near to its end, one of the most common topic is about the “new year’s resolution” which is somehow a very boring subject matter to tackle.  Perhaps those teachers from our primary and even until the collegiate level are responsible for making this subject matter unexciting.  During the first day of classes in each new year, we will be asked to recite or make a written article about our new year’s resolution just to give us something to do in the classroom because they are not yet ready for the lesson proper.  It’s quite easy though, but mostly done with a heavy heart and deep sighs knowing that ninety percent of our declarations are just there for the sake of having written something or just for a show.

But is it really necessary to have a new year’s resolution?  Even if the future holds only uncertainties, why bother, if it’s only a waste of time and effort when everything seems to happen as they should without regard to our plans and proposals.

“The act or process of reducing to simpler form”, is the meaning of resolution according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary.  Let us try to understand the meaning as defined if we could still add new color and discover a new way of looking or appreciating it’s effective use if ever we will make use of it.  It says, we should simplify complex notions, objectives, or goals.  For what purpose?  For attainability of our desired goal, breaking it down into small and detailed components would make us determine more realistically the steps that should  comes first and what’s next and so on.  Quite true, isn’t it?  So instead of making complex  resolution like ” I will be more frugal next year”, the more simpler form is “I will be more cost conscious in …(identify what particular expenditure/s)” or better yet, define and quantify the estimated percent of reduction in the choses item/s.  In this way we will be able to identify and focus on that particular item that we can afford to cut down its cost while other items may not be possible to be reduced.

But why wait for another year to make a resolution?  I know your damn answer, “because it is called a new year’s resolution!”.

One of the fundamental concept in the field of accounting is called the “Periodicity Concept”, which states that an entity’s life can be meaningfully subdivided into equal time periods for reporting purposes.  It will be aimless to wait for the actual last day of operations to perfectly and truly measure the entity’s net income.  Because of this concept, the users of the financial reports can obtain timely information to serve as a basis on making decisions about future activities.

Categorically speaking this concept is use in the accounting parlance, but can you see the relevance of this concept as true and applicable to our life’s performance?  Why wait for the end of our lives to measure how we fare with each performance while we can have shorten but meaningful divisions that would serve us the basis how to move on to the next episode.  And a measure of one year is not too short nor long enough to evaluate how much we gain or lose in our financial condition, in our spiritual quest, in our academic feat, in our career and job, in our relationships with our family, friends and love ones, and other aspects that we valued in our lives.

Let us define and redefine our motives and objectives while keeping the lessons learned in the past.  Try to make one new year’s resolution even if you would find the future’s somewhat bleak and uncertain.  Planning for an uncertain future is making our future certain in some way or another.

I already made one for year 2009:  I will post at least one article per month at Triond.