AH, ANOTHER year, another chance to set yourself up to fail, right? Wait… that doesn’t sound like a good time, does it? Then why Every. Single. Bleeding. December. do we decide that it’s time to make new year’s resolutions? And not the kind that we could manage. No, no. We’re shooting for the stars… annually. We want it all — lose weight, make more money, exercise more, eat less, drink less, call mum more, spend less, travel more, start that god-forsaken book. Why not just toss in world peace and solve global hunger while you’re at it? Those goals are about as attainable as the vague ones you’ve set for yourself! It’s true!

Here’s our short list of the resolutions you shouldn’t be making this new year. Save yourself the misery of certain failure by avoiding these baddies:

Lose weight: You and everyone else are heaving your flesh onto the conveyor belts of treadmills across the globe this month in misguided, un-focused — thus short-lived — attempts to lose weight before falling back off the wagon, elbow-deep in a box of Jaffa cakes just weeks later. Either get specific or go home.

For example, say you want to lose five pounds and will go to the gym three nights a week, or that you’ll never going back to the kitchen for seconds. Stop drinking Orange Mocha Frappucinos every two hours (which will also help with the next non-resolution in this list). Now that’s a goal.

You don’t really want to slim if you’re only willing to pay it lip service.

Spend less: Do you even know what you spend now? Probably not if your resolution is to spend less. How arbitrary! And finances are anything but that. Analyze how you spend, where you can trim fat and then create an achievable goal or set of micro-goals — spend only X per month in highlights, cancel the gym membership you don’t use (and won’t if another one of your goals is simply “lose weight”) and save X per month. Start walking to work and save X per month on public transit and taxis (and watch your bum shrink from all that free exercise).

Exercise more: This is almost the same as lose weight, but not quite since so many people try to lose weight without actually being more active (lazy gits). If you think you’ll exercise more by simply forcing yourself to climbing atop that workout machine every day, let’s revisit in March and see if you’re still at it. Set a real goal — run a 10K by March, rock climb a 70-foot wall, do an entire Bikram yoga class, learn how to play tennis, swim 100 laps… whatever, but slap a number on it and make it more fun than staring at a wall like a gerbil on a wheel or your efforts are doomed from that first step.

Be happier: First, happiness is overrated in our society. Being unhappy is an essential part of life. It gives you something to contrast your happy times with. Suffering, the Buddhists noted, is (to paraphrase) life. If there are singular, specific things that make you unhappy that are possible to change, that’s a different story. Un-stick yourself from those situations specifically by coming up with a plan of action and shift the wording around your resolution to “be happier about X” and there’s a chance you just might make it.

There are plenty more bad resolutions out there, but hopefully you’ll take away the main points here and apply them to all those other baddies: First, set realistic, achievable goals. Don’t focus on some vague, distant, abstract idea. Make it about a specific action or plan and then figure out the steps — the micro-goals — document it and get to work, making sure you check in with yourself regularly to see if you’re actually doing it.

In fact, why not make your first resolution on your list for 2011 to  “make more specific, attainable resolutions”.

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