Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s that time of year again, of course, for resolutions. The secret to making them happen tends to be gradual, habitual changes that you can sustain, or improve upon, over time, rather than drastic and dramatic changes. You should also have a plan to monitor progress. It’s more in the details than concept, essentially. So with that in mind, I want to know what is your biggest resolution for 2013, and how are you realistically planning to achieve this?

If this is news to you, well, just because it’s January 1st, 2nd or whatever, doesn’t mean it’s too late to reformulate. I’ve given my resolution below, and how I intend to achieve it, as an example to illustrate my points above.

My biggest resolution this year involves sewing and fashion design. The priority will be on clothes for me, but I’ll also be making stuff for others, and for the start of a portfolio that will have its ultimate purpose determined later. It’s not lacking purpose now. It’s just in the multiple choice stage.

I have defined my resolution not in terms of outcomes, like number and/or types of garments to be made. That is too hard for me to determine right now. I can assure you I would be changing outcomes all the time throughout the year as I get new ideas and inspirations. Knowing outcomes wouldn’t work as a resolution, I turned to input instead. If I put the work in, the outcomes will take care of themselves.

I decided to measure my input via time spent doing activities related to sewing and/or fashion design “work”. It’s not for pay, but I won’t be times used for meetings with others, learning with my Pinterest account, or blogging about my sewing, either. It has to be time put into working on something and/or learning towards working on it. I chose time because time is something I can keep track of relatively easy.

Then I decided on how much time I was going to put into this. I came up with a nice round figure of 1000 hours. That’s half a full-time job for a year (50 weeks x 40 hours per week, 2 weeks’ vacation, equals 2000 hours). However, I didn’t just pluck 1000 hours out of the blue. I thought about what I had in my days, weeks and such, and contemplated what I thought would be possible, while also being challenging to me. That turned out to be 20 hours a week, averaging 2 hours per week night and 5 hours per weekend day. I highly doubt I’ll follow it that strictly, but it gives me a regular target to strive towards, and quick warning signs if I fall behind, logging my time in my free Excel running log as if it were a “cross-training” activity to my running.

Finally, I filled in some details as to the type of work I would be doing, and some goals I know for certain that I need to accomplish. These included taking a variety of sewing classes, learning Wild Ginger fashion design software, mastering a better serger than the beginner’s model I had till now, getting a model to make women’s clothing (done!) for my women’s clothing portfolio, and replacing a whole bunch of garments in my current closet. They’re pretty plain, for the most part, due to lack of nice stuff for guys 5’2″ who don’t part easily with their money. While I don’t have garment goals set for my resolution, my motivation would be that all those old garments go by the end of 2013, whether or not I have replacements for them! Let’s hope for everyone’s sake I keep my focus so I won’t be the emperor showing off new clothes in 2014!

Oh, yes, motivation! Aside from your desire to accomplish your resolution like everybody has, you need some additional incentives, and maybe a few potential consequences. Depending on your personality, a balance of some of each would probably work, rather than all one or the other. You’ll have to figure that out yourself, but you need it because if you didn’t, everybody would have all their resolutions done!

My consequence is the loss of the garments I’ve already identified. The incentive is to replace them with something nicer so I can feel like a fashionista when I go out, or even when I’m at home in designer P-jammies! I’m going to have designer everything, and I’m going to be out and about just to wear it for others to see, if for no other reason! I’ve already done that for some garments, taking strolls in them despite generally believing that strolls are for old people!

Anyway, if you want to share, I’d love to hear about your biggest resolution. If you have time, share some details on how you plan to achieve it, too! Happy New Year and good luck with all your resolutions!