I'm going for competence but it will be hard work

I may not be getting better at much else, but I am getting better at making new year's resolutions. Mine for 2008 is the best I've ever made. It's positive, it's ambitious, it's inspiring but it also has a highish chance of success. It is to be competent.

In the old days I used to make the classic mistake of resolving to stop doing things that I knew were bad. Drinking, shouting at the children, playing Freecell.

These resolutions failed within hours. If you do bad things knowing they are bad, there must be something pretty powerful compelling you to do so. In my case, there is the pleasing sensation of alcohol, the annoyingness of children and the imperative to improve one's Freecell average score.

So simply to state one dark day in midwinter (a time when bad habits are needed to keep morale up) that you are quitting is to set yourself up for certain, instant and ignominious failure.

Last year I tried a less ambitious approach and resolved to do nice things in 2007. My resolution was to go to the cinema more often. Alas, I fared no better. There is a solid reason for my scant attendance: there's never a good film on at the right cinema at the right time, and my resolution did nothing to change that.

This year I decided to find out where I was going wrong. My research took me to David Maister, author of Strategy and the Fat Smoker. He says that individuals fail with new year resolutions in just the same way that companies fail with strategy. Everyone knows what they ought to do; they know why and how. But actually doing it is another matter altogether.

He thinks we ask ourselves the wrong question. Instead of wondering what we would like to change, we should ask which changes we might be prepared to make.

So for 2008 I have resolved to give myself the third degree before making any resolutions.

On New Year's Eve I spotted in the newsagent my own picture on the masthead of the Financial Timesnestling against a picture of Nigella Lawson, my former university acquaintance, on the front of the Guardian.

Suddenly I knew what I wanted: to be less frumpy in 2008. Over Christmas I read a book on glamour for ageing women so knew how to do it and was quite excited at the prospect. But then I asked: can I really be bothered, day in and day out, to make so much effort with brushes and blow driers to achieve an uncertain end result?

Instead I've turned my attention to work - a more promising area for improvement. For inspiration I've waded through hundreds of resolutions offered by coaches and other workplace experts on the web.

After rejecting a lot of guff such as "make personal growth part of the daily routine" I came up with six decent resolutions. In each case I asked myself searchingly if I am really prepared to commit to any of them.

Clean out the e-mail inbox. Mine has many thousands of messages sitting in it and is crying out for a clear-up. But am I ready to do it? As I survived e-mail chaos in 2007, there is no reason why I shouldn't go on surviving in 2008. And if the box gets too full, I can always just delete a couple of things with enormous attachments and make the problem go away until next year.

Give something back to the community. This might seem like a good idea, but I can't really get beyond the annoying use of the word "back". This implies that one has taken too much to start off with, which I reject. Actually I find the word "community" annoying too. Give more money to charity is a better resolution, and I'm considering it.

Produce work I'm proud of. This is the resolution of Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who writes a blog for Timemagazine. It sounds okay, but if you look closer it makes no sense. If you weren't producing work you were proud of before, there were probably reasons for that. Perhaps you were too sloppy. Why should that suddenly change?

Spend more time talking to people face to face. This is a great idea, but I do rather too much of it already. If anything I should try to cut back.

Delegate more. I'd like to do this, but am prevented by having no one who reports to me and even if I did I probably wouldn't be good at it as I'm a control freak.

Learn something new. This has some appeal. I've always fancied upholstery, but as I can't even get myself to the cinema more than three times a year, I don't see myself going to weekly upholstery classes.

It seems I can't find a single thing I am seriously committed to change, which is bad. Yet Mr Maister offers some comfort: "There is no shame in aiming for competence if you are unwilling to pay the price for excellence. But don't try to mislead clients, staff, colleagues or yourself with time-wasting demoralising attempts to convince them that you are actually committed to pursing the goal."

So this year I have quit misleading myself and am going for competence. Yet I disagree that this is merely nothing to be ashamed of. Surely competence is something to be proud of, and a worthy resolution not just for 2008 but forever?

Being competent is really hard. It means overcoming laziness, sloppiness and disaffection. It requires increasing effort as standards rise and conditions change. For me, it will be tough to be competent in 2008, but I'm committed to trying.