Achieving Your Goals This Year

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Monday January 11, 2010 00:00

Yes, service delivery in Botswana continues to be characterised by endless queues. Nonetheless I awaited my turn to get my name into the 'system' as that was the gate pass to attending classes and ultimately becoming a taxpayer.   

I had to endure the long queue because my resolution that year as in the previous three years had been to work hard and complete my studies within the stipulated studying period. Amidst the volumes of paperwork and other hardships that characterise life I managed to fulfill that resolution. However, that was not the only resolution I had inked in my life book that year; there were others that I am yet to act upon.

This time around, with the rising of the new dawn, I only had one resolution which was to know my HIV status.

I have achieved that resolution as I have rightfully gone for my test. I made this my resolution because I had not gone for an HIV test in the last 12 months and for Botswana to achieve zero transmission of the virus by the year 2016 it takes a collective effort.You and I have to be active role players not just spectators. 

I am not the only person who made New Year's resolutions. Hundreds of thousands of people also made decisions to behave or act in a particular way during the New Year.

While it is not wrong that after every 365 days one should reflect and try to erase some habits, it is sad that these resolutions are usually short lived.  Richard Aude is pursuing a certificate in IT at Realic Education Service.

Aude's new year's resolution is brief - he wants to obtain the right grades that will not only secure him a place in the job market; he wants to be well equipped for the task.
'This years' main resolution is to work hard and obtain good grades that will make me achieve whatever task I will be assigned to in the workplace,' he says.

While he admits that New Year's resolutions are good to draw, Aude says many-a- times there is a tendency to pay lip service to the resolutions, as people do not take their New Year's resolutions seriously. In addition, he says there is a tendency of setting wrong goals that one does not have the competence to act upon.

'I have the discipline and competency to make this resolution real,' he says.

He adds that it is of outmost importance to set a goal that one knows they can strive to accomplish, and that respecting oneself and other people is key to accomplishing whatever one has set to achieve.

While New Years' resolutions continue to have short shelf lives, Aude says it is good that people use the previous year as a mirror into the next year. He urges those who made resolutions for 2010 to stick to them in order to see positive changes.

An upcoming artist, Rebaone Moakofhi, says while he is always determined to live up to his New Years' resolutions, he usually encounters little hiccups.

He describes a New Year's resolution as an action plan for a 12-month period, which takes determination to accomplish.

'It's a goal, and without determination it will never take you anywhere,' he says.Moakofhi has resolved to enhance his personal development through being punctual, reliable, caring and loving. For him, this resolution is a personal message that can take him through a productive 2010 only if he is devoted.

A Public Relations lecturer at Limkokwing University, Sharon Tshipa, believes New Years resolutions have become a useless routine that equally waste time. During the last four years, her resolution was to keep her grades up so that she could graduate.

'For the last four years my resolution has been to build a good portfolio that could sell me after years of studying,' she says.

Now that she has graduated, Tshipa does not see a need for having a New Year's resolution.

'They are a waste of time,' she says.

She says she will go straight into doing anything she wants to achieve this year without necessarily having it diarised as a New Year's resolution. Tshipa says they make one lazy and lead to procrastination as people usually believe they have a whole year to do something.

'When you come to your senses it is too late, then the common saying is that the year was a bad one because I couldn't do this and that,' she says.

Every service provider's 2010 resolution should be quality service provision. Long queues have to be a thing of the past.