Before I introduce Mike Raven, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still working on my serial feature. I wanted to debut it this month but as we all know, life can intervene and so on and so forth. Without further ado, I would like to officially welcome Mike to The Ledge.

He is a talented vlogger and blogger who hails from Hull in the UK. I have been following him for months now and he never ceases to make me laugh. I am quite fortunate to have him as my very first guest. No, he isn't tied up in my basement or anything (that you know of). He actually agreed to do a blog takeover. I really appreciate him crossing the Atlantic.

Please check out his amazing material on YouTube as well as his blog:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxW3mSw7yzKwt6-4QJs4ssg

http://thoggy.blogspot.com/

Resolving to Resolve

How's your New Year’s resolutions coming on?

According to a 2007 study by Richard Wiseman of the University of Bristol, 88% of people fail to achieve their resolutions. I don't know how many of those have dropped out by the end of January, but I would be willing to wager that it's a fair few.

I used to commit to New Year’s resolutions every year, like "I will lose weight", sometimes backing up the resolution by signing up to a gym or slimming club, and the following weeks would roughly pass as follows:

Week 1 - after a successful week of healthy eating and exercise, I've dropped several pounds! Feeling great.

Week 2 - not had such a good week, I didn't get the exercise in because it's been far too cold to go running. But I've lost a couple of pounds.

Week 3 - I've shaved my entire body hair in the futile hope that I manage to lose half a pound.

Week 4 - beer chocolate chocolate beer pies pies pies mmmmmmmmm.........

So, I'd be the first to say that resolutions, without proper planning, are unlikely to work.

Interestingly, Professor Wiseman suggests that different strategies for resolutions are best for men and women. For men, they are apparently better at sticking to resolutions if they are easily quantified (for example, saying "lose one pound a week" rather than "lose weight"), while women do better if they make their goals public and get support from their friends and family.

The last one I think is particularly interesting, because I had heard elsewhere that when you want to complete a task or activity (say, running a marathon), in some cases making lists or making it public that you want to achieve a task, reduces the chance that you'll do the things on the list.

The action of making a list and publicising it in some way makes you think that you've already done the work towards completing the task, and you have less of an urge to actually do it. I completely empathise with this idea. I'm a good one for planning something in great detail, and then never actually getting around to following through with my beautifully designed plan!

At any rate, please feel free to comment as to whether you've made resolutions this year, and how you're getting on with them!