Outsourcing my New Year’s resolutions again: Would you like to play a role?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I take my goal setting and New Year’s resolutions very seriously.  Except of course, for the months of October and November of this year, when I completely dropped the ball. No idea why. Just busy, I guess.

At the end of every month I typically post the progress of each of my New Year’s resolutions, and I am tough on myself when I fail to achieve my goals. 

I’d begun the process of deciding upon my 2013 goals when I came upon a piece in the Wall Street Journal on New Year’s resolutions that suggests that outsourcing your resolutions may improve your ability to achieve them.

Most of us could use help achieving our goals. Who better to tell us how to improve ourselves than someone who knows us well—perhaps better than we know ourselves—and even may be all too happy to offer up some tough love? And if we promise to check in regularly with this person to discuss our progress, we’ll probably do a much better job of keeping our resolutions.

"We all have blind spots, but the people we are intimate with can see through them," says David Palmiter, a couples therapist and professor of psychology at Marywood University, in Scranton, Pa. A loved one can encourage us to meet our goals and hold us accountable when we slip, he says.

I’ve always asked a select group of friends to suggest goals for my upcoming year, but after reading this piece, I thought it might be a good idea to open up my goal selection process to anyone who might want to participate. 

So if you’d like to suggest a goal for me in 2013, I would love to hear your ideas. Please note that this does not guarantee that I will adopt every suggested goal, but I will seriously consider all that are submitted. 

Also note that all goals must be empirically measurable, so a goal like “Be less of a jerk-face” could not be included in my list of resolutions because there is no way for me to determine if the goal was met.

But you’re welcome to tell me to stop being a jerk-face at any time if you’d like. Not need to wait until the end of the year to make that request.