Here it is, the last day of 2006, and the Sunday Papers are of course full of retrospectives, “Top 10″ lists, and New Year’s resolutions.
While I’m sure you have also read a bunch of these things in your local paper, I found two articles in the NY Times worth sharing.
The first actually appeared on Saturday – Dan Mitchell’s “What’s Online” column, entitled “The Lazy Top 10 Anything“. It’s a wry look at the “season of the list”; my favorite was the “Top 10 Biggest Business Debacles” (from consumerist.com), which was led by the now infamous incident where an AOL customer recorded his attempt to cancel his service.
Also good was the list of the year’s Top 10 online scams (from consumeraffairs.org), which also came with this sage (and oh so ever still true) advice: “Keep your wits about you, be skeptical and remember — trite though it may be — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
The second article was from Lisa Belkin, who I’ve frequently cited this year for her excellent “Life’s Work” column. This time she looks askance at our annual ritual of New Year’s resolutions (at least the “black and white” ones).
I’ve never been a big fan of these resolutions – I agree with Lisa when she says “the making of resolutions feels too much like a measure of what you haven’t done and who you haven’t been over the past year. And in part it’s because we keep making the same resolutions over and over, expending energy but not getting anywhere.”
A better idea, says Lisa, is an “in-between” approach, where we do things “more” or “less” or as “often as we can”. I agree – this is right in line with my advice to “stay away from absolutes, absolutely” in my “5 Quick Tips to Keep the Glass Half-Full“.
So, maybe I’ll reduce my Starbucks intake next year………..yeah, right! 
Happy New Year!
Popularity: 2% [?]
Subscribe By RSS
Subscribe By E-mail