Ask HN: What is your new year's resolution?

> The book is full of delights, but one of my favourite parts is the opening passage, four pages long, in which Rick Deckard and his wife Iran are arguing about the Penfield Mood Organ as they get up in the morning. The Mood Organ is a device with which, by punching in a number, a human user can instantly alter his or her mood. Deckard routinely sets it to have him get up in a cheerful mood, and advises his wife to do the same. Her objection to this is almost exactly the same as my objection above to sentimentality. Emotions need to be earned. She tells her husband that her mood organ schedule for the day includes a “six-hour self-accusatory depression” and when Deckard asks her why on Earth anyone would want to schedule that, she argues that it’s healthy to feel emotions that are congruent with the situation you find yourself in: in their case a poisoned and depopulated world. In fact, she tells him, she has programmed the organ to plunge her into despair twice a month.

>> “But a mood like that,” Rick said, “you’re apt to stay in it, not dial your way out…”

>> “I program an automatic resetting for three hours later,” his wife said sleekly. “A 481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future: new hope that—”

>> “I know 481,” he interrupted. He had dialed out the combination many times; he relied on it greatly.

> Without reproducing the whole passage, I can’t convey just how funny it is. Among the other settings they discuss are 888, “the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it” and 3, which stimulates the cerebral cortex into wanting to dial.

https://www.tor.com/2015/05/21/that-was-awesome-the-penfield...

To improve my writing, I'd like to learn how to evoke emotions in the reader

To make my friendships more meaningful and to meet more interesting people

To make an impact on people for the better, hopefully using tech but not necessarily

To smile more and have try to not be stressed

To try and figure out what I want to do and work towards trying it out

If I get the time(which I wont), learn the math behind machine learning and gain the technical chops to build a MVP.

Consolidate: I have too many things going on at the moment. A day job, freelance consulting gigs, side projects, family and stuff. Need to sort my priorities and consolidate some of the stuff to avoid burnout.

Concentrate: Multi-tasking is more of a bane than a boon. It usually impacts concentration, leading to some not-so-good decisions. My goal is to reduce the number of active tasks at a time and focus more on things in front of me than worrying about the future.

Collaborate: Another goal of the upcoming year is to collaborate more. There are so many interesting problems around us that can be solved with collective wisdom. I am all for active collaboration, without spreading myself thin, of course.