I can't remember the last time I wrote any New Year's resolutions. I must've done so when I was a kid, but I really can't remember any. Anyhow, I've decided to write some this year to help me keep on track.

A lot of New Year's resolutions are too vague. Things like "Get fit", "Spend less time on Facebook", "Be nicer to Mike". Whilst we can all get on board with the sentiment behind them (poor Mike has had a rough year), they're not very easy to achieve because they're not measurable. I've learnt from work that if you don't have a strategy for measuring the success of a project it's barely worth doing it, so I'm determined to make my resolutions measurable and attainable.

But focussing on measurable goals does come at the cost that my resolutions don't really sum up my intentions for the year. Obviously I want to be healthier, more sociable and nicer—and these resolutions should help be get there—but that personal development is the sum total of all the little things I do.

1. Write 20 blog posts or articles of at least 1000 words

Either on this site, or on my Medium profile. Writing is therapeutic and helps you think in a different, analytical way. I don't want to write to be read (my latest Medium post so far has been read by one person), but for my own self-development. Hopefully if I write enough then my style and content will improve and people will want to read it, but this is for me.

Incidentally, 25% of traffic to this site has been to 1 article, because I'm the third result for "SSL 10054" on Google and DuckDuckGo; first on Bing. It's good to have a niche.

1. Don't give up on your resolutions already
2. Election by Error — Democratic Caucus
3. Election by Error — Republican Caucus (a solid 5000 words)
4. "FATAL ERROR: Allocation failed" error with WebdriverIO and Cucumber
5. Node.js ENOENT error explanations
6. How to pick a software library
7. Render Conference 2016 sessions
8. Linting for everybody
9. Positive side effects of automated testing
10. Generating barcode PDFs with bwip-js and jsPDF
11. Consistency in Assessment Tools
12. What is a “published mark”?
13. The more things seem to change…
14. Only Fools and Horses – Christmas Crackers
15. Pointless Celebrities – 2013 Christmas Special
16. Castle – Secret Santa

2. Watch 10 silent films

Surprisingly, I came up with this in Nicaragua whilst in a bar playing Harold Lloyd's For Heaven's Sake. It's not Lloyd's best but it's still an excellent film with that enduring charm that only really exists in silent movies. I used to love silent films, but haven't watched many recently. In 2016 I want to watch a bunch to remind myself how much I enjoy them. This is also a great opportunity to share the films with other people and introduce them to the silent world.

1. The General (1926)
2. The Artist (2011)

3. Record at least one podcast episode

I have an idea for a podcast that I'm keeping under wraps at the moment. I've talked for years about recording a podcast and this particular idea really seems to me to have legs. This resolution will hopefully force my hand a bit and get me to give the idea a fair crack.

4. Play 24 hours of badminton

Not in one sitting, hopefully.

I played a fair amount of badminton in the start of 2015, but fell away from it later in the year. It's a good sport and I don't get enough exercise, so this should get me going!

1. 2 hours with Phil, Amy, Harry and Neil.
2. 2 hours with Amy, Isaac, Lily, Callum and Susan.