Generally, I’ve regarded New Years resolutions as an innocuous activity for the hopelessly neurotic. After all, someone who does the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome, has got to be a little bit disturbed. And being both neurotic and disturbed, I keep making resolutions without fail every year.

This year is somewhat different. Thanks to the inspiration of Cindy Easton’s, Karen Campbell’s and Kimbra Power’s fifth-graders who have shared their resolutions with us in this issue (see pages 14-15), I am no longer a hopeless neurotic; I am a hopeful neurotic. I think I have a chance. You gotta read these. They are just the best. These children—so full of hope and promise, so bright and earnest—they’re an absolute inspiration to be around.

Experts says that resolutions should be measurable and achievable, i.e. realistic. For example: “This year I will become fluent in Chinese.” How do you measure a goal like this? For me, this means that within 12 months, I will be able to tell the taxi driver to get me home to my Jinqaio flat at Green Court without using the word “Jelly-four.”

Other possibilities: “I will learn how to perform a ‘right-click’ function on my MacBook.” I might need two years for this one. Or, “In 2010, I will stop embarrassing myself.” I don’t know how to measure that goal, and it’s certainly not realistic or achievable.

Some resolutions I know I won’t keep, so why make them? I’m not going to lose a ton of weight, I’m not going to get organized, I am not going to take control of my Facebook page. I mean, I might do those things, but not because it’s January 1—but because I need to for my own sanity.

So I don’t know. What now interests me is the “personal metrics movement,” the practice of tracking every facet of our physical lives and then analyzing that data to produce better results. Personal metrics is catching on these days, and some are suggesting that it contributes to a new field of knowledge.

One observer says that “keeping personal statistics on everything from heart rate, blood pressure, mood at various hours of the day, body response to and quantity of exercise, weight gain or loss, cognitive speed, pain levels, caloric intake and other measurable aspects of our lives is becoming easier all the time, thanks to advances in the technology readily available to most people. Computers, iPhones, pedometers, heart-rate monitors, blood-sugar meters, cyclometers and the like not only make it simple to read our personal numbers, but also to maintain a record of them over time.” 

This can get out of hand, of course. For example, there’s a Facebook app that randomly pings you with a text message, to which you respond with a number indicating your happiness level at that moment. I can’t imagine that I’m going to be very happy getting pinged randomly throughout the day by my computer. There’s enough pinging in my life already. 
But, anyway, eventually, if you do this right, you get a happiness graph against which you can compare other tracked events in your day.

How might personal metrics make a difference for you or me? We might track how much time we sit in front of the TV; how much time we spend reading, or exercising, or meditating, or studying, or eating, sleeping, and so on. We might measure how far we walk in a week, or run, or bike. We do this for a month, or even one week, and we can begin to monitor progress.
I think we’re sort of hard-wired for improvement. We want to do better. We want to be better. And we love it when we have the tools—when someone (a teacher, perhaps) gives us the tools—to make actualization and achievement possible. 

I see this basic human impulse in what the fifth-graders say. They want to “stop biting ” their nails, to be kinder to a brother, to practice more on piano and violin, to not lie anymore. It’s great to be part of a team that’s helping children achieve their goals and their dreams. I am a part of this. YOU are a part of this. It’s very cool.

—Timothy Merrill, Editor, The EAGLE

To learn more about the personal metrics movement, see Gary Wolf’s article of June 22, 2009, in Wired magazine (“Know Thyself: Tracking Every Facet of Life, from Sleep to Mood to Pain, 24/7/365”).