It’s the time of the year to make New Year’s Resolutions.
Most of these things don’t work, primarily because people pick hard stuff. Quit
smoking, lose weight, fix the country’s health care system… Y’know, stuff
that’s both good and important and yet is likely to fail.

One of the things I used to tell the kids when I taught the
research and thesis class was that if you wanted to have successful research,
you needed to have several hypotheses. The first one is the “Water is Wet
Hypothesis.” Basically, you are simply applying logic and theory to a set
of data that, unless you ended up sneaking into Bizzaroland, should work pretty
easily. The second one is the “Let’s Extend the Game Hypothesis.” In that case,
you’re stretching a bit, looking for a new way to apply the theory or moving
the theory into a new area or applying the theory to a new population. It’s new
and expansive while being fairly safe. The third one is the “If Wishes Were
Horses Hypothesis.” This is where, if the world were full of win and unicorns
and ice cream grew on trees and didn’t make you fat, you would substantially
augment/alter the theory through your findings on this hypothesis. In short,
don’t count on this panning out, but if it does, that’d be awesomesauce.

The problem with most of the resolutions is that they fit
into the third category. If you have been chain-smoking Luckies without the
filter for 40 years, chances are the calendar turning over to a new year isn’t
likely to be the key ingredient to helping you quit. If you’re thinking that
telling the Whopper guy to hold the mayo is going to help you drop from a size
80 to a size 8, you’re either Jared from Subway or you’re delusional. If you’re
trying to fix health care without popular president and a majority in congress
and… Uh… Wait… Yeah, OK…

The point is with this year, I’m applying the simple premise
of my research class to help me feel like I’m doing better on the resolutions. Tick
a few items off the list and I won’t be feeling like a failure if I don’t hit
the trifecta. Below is a list of the resolutions I’m making, using those three
key categories. Feel free to use the comment portion to add your own grouping
of three…

Continue reading “Let it be resolved…”