With the first quarter of 2019 crossed out of your calendar, have you stuck with your New Year’s resolutions（新年计划）? If yes, congratulations! Keep on doing it! However, it won’t surprise anyone if you are among most people who fail to make any changes.

Procrastination（拖延症），meaning putting off actions for one reason or another, may play an important part here.For example, when we read a book or write articles, the efficiency will decrease if we have a cell phone close by and we have to finish the plans next day.

Apart from procrastination, overconfidence may also be part of the problem.“Optimism and even overconfidence can produce false beliefs, leading us to overvalue our abilities,” Israeli-American behaviorist Daniel Kahneman and Israeli psychologist Amos Tversky wrote.In one famous example, planners first planned the Sydney Opera House would be completed by 1963.However, it was actually completed in 1973, an entire decade later.

Knowing the causes of the problem, we can come up with some solutions.According to US writer Steve Pavlina, we could make a to-do list of upcoming tasks, and write down a rough plan for how long we expect each task to take.

Another way is to try and be more objective -- take more of an “outsider”view.The ability to think about your experiences from a more independent point of view, rather than a shared one, is important.“It keeps you from getting overly buried in your bias（偏见）,” Psychology Today wrote.

These methods aren’t enough to send a man to the moon.You also should take action right now.For instance, if you don’t feel lazy, meeting a deadline one week ahead of time is probably a good way to finish your plan.

It's natural to feel the need to control something when everything around you feels out of control, and you feel helpless. When a friend of mine first heard about the coronavirus outbreak, she got down on her hands and knees and cleaned her kitchen floor. She told me, “My floor wasn't even dirty, but doing something constructive made me feel in control and that I was holding on to my power, despite the desperate circumstances.”

Your most powerful weapon against uncertainty is your perspective because nobody and no situation can take that from you unless you give it away. Your perspective can victimize or empower you. When you look for the upside in a downside situation and figure out what you can control and what you can't, it's easier to accept whatever is beyond your control.

A Wise Way to Make Families Rules

All groups, of whatever size or nature, need standard operating procedures. Without them, groups may very well fall into confusion, chaos and conflict. The functions that rules can serve are indispensable. When it comes to parenting, making rules can make a big difference in our family as well. Actually, the issue is not whether our families need rules. We do need them. The real issue is how to motivate all family members to comply with (遵守) them.

At some time in our lives we all have felt unmotivated to comply with some rule or policy that we had no voice in making. Denied the opportunity to participate in establishing a rule, most people feel imposed upon and resentful of the new rule. But when people actively participate in setting a rule or making a decision that will affect them, they are more highly motivated to comply with it. We call this the Principle of Participation, and it has proven its effectiveness in families as well.

When children are given the opportunity to participate in setting rules or making decisions that will affect them, several good things happen. Children feel better about themselves — having more self-esteem (自尊心) and self-confidence. Such a good effect is due to their feeling that they have gained more “fate control” over their own lives. They also feel they are equal members of the family with an equal voice in making decisions and establishing rules — they’re part of a team, not second-class citizens. This means that families that function collaboratively and democratically will have closer and warmer relationships than those in which the adults act as bosses or authorities expecting the children to obey the rules made for them.

Another important reason for encouraging the full participation of family members in decision making is that it often produces higher-quality solutions to problems. Two heads (or three, or four) are better than one. Shared decisions will be based not only on the knowledge and experience of the adults but also on those of the children. The admonition (告诫) that father knows best should be challenged now.