The New Year is a time for resolutions. Mentally, at least most of us could compileTormidable lists of 'do's' and 'don'ts' for the year. The same old favorites recur year inyear out with monotonous regularity. We resolve to get up earlier each morning, eatless, ſind more time to play with the children, do a thousand and one jobs about thehouse, be nice to people we don't like, drive carefully, and take the dog for a walkevery day. Past experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyondattainment. If we remain deep-rooted liars, it is only because we have so oftenexperienced the frustration that results from failure.Most of us fail in our efforts at self-improvement because our schemes are tooambitious and we never have time to carry them out. We also make the fundamentalerror of announcing our resolutions to everybody so that we look even more foolishwhen we slip back into our bad old ways. Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attemptedto keep my resolutions to myself. I limited myself to two modest ambitions; to dophysical exercise every morning and to read more every evening. An all-night partyon New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either ofthese new resolutions on the first day of the year, but on the second, I applied myselfassiduously to the task.The daily exercise lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in themorning before anyone had got up. The self-discipline required to drag myself out ofbed eleven minutes earlier than usual was considerable. Nevertheless, I managed tocreep down into the living-room for two days before anyone found me out. Afterjumping about on the carpet and twisting the human frame into uncomfortablepositions, I sat down at the breakfast table in an exhausted condition. It was this thatbetrayed me. The next morning the whole family trooped in to watch theperformance. That was really unsettling but I fended off the taunts and jibes of thefamily good humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea. However, myenthusiasm waned, the time I spent at exercises gradually diminished. Little by littlethe eleven minutes fell to zero. By January 10th I was back to where I had startedfrom. I argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself at exercises in the morning 1would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home from work. Resisting thehypnotizing effect of television, I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyesglued to a book. One night however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs andsat in front of the television pretending to read. That proved to be my undoing, for 1soon got back to the old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen. I still haven'tgiven up my resolution to do more reading. In fact, I have just bought a book entitledHow to Read a Thousand Words a Minute.' Perhaps it will solve my problem, but Ijust haven't had time to read it.​