Setting Goals versus Resolutions

It's that time of year again - New Year's Eve is around the corner and people are planning their resolutions for 2015. Gyms will be packed with people who have the best intentions of getting fit again, diet programs will see an uptick in memberships, stores will sell more organization tools, and many people will be making lists of things that they plan on improving on. I'm not one of them.

I've never made resolutions for the new year - at least I can't recall ever doing so. My new year always seems to be in September, when children go back to school and work places return to normal after employees have returned from summer vacations. January 1 doesn't seem like a new year to me. The week before and the week after are the same - not like September when the season is changing and new opportunities seem to be everywhere.

But what about setting goals? Is that different? I think it is. Setting a goal means you want to accomplish something over the course of the upcoming year. The goal could be related to health (losing weight, getting fit, eating better), personal life (learning a new skill, traveling, saving money), or business life (landing a new client, starting a business, changing jobs). A goal seems to be a more practical way of approaching a new year.

Last year, I set a goal to save money for Christmas 2014, starting in January. I used the 52-week savings plan that was circulating on Facebook. But I did it with a twist. The plan said to save one dollar for the number week of the year - so in week one, you saved one dollar. In week two, you saved two dollars, in week 32, you saved 32 dollars, and so on. But I thought that it might be harder to have more money at the end of the year than at the beginning, so I flipped it. Week one, I saved 52 dollars. Week two, I saved 51 dollars, and so on. Sure enough - by the time shopping for Christmas came around, I had a nice sum in my savings account to pay cash for everything. It worked. It may not work for everyone, but it worked for me. I met my goal and I was quite proud of myself!

So, what's my goal for 2015? I have a book coming out early next year. It's for the general public on a health issue that most people should find helpful. My goal is to ensure the book is off to a great start, and that marketing and publicity push it to a point that people will see it and think, "hmm, I need this book."

I also want to increase my number of clients. I have some great regular clients for whom I write site content and articles for online and print use, but I'd like to add to that group for a bit more variety. To do that, I need to do more marketing and networking. So, my goal is to get out a certain number of letters of introductions (LOIs) and applications over the course of the year.

For the personal part of my life, I want to learn more about different quilting techniques that are interesting me. I started a new-to-me skill project just before Christmas and am happy with how it is going. But there is so much more I want to learn! My goal is to read, learn, and practice until I feel I've accomplished the new skills.

Do you have goals? What are your goals for the upcoming year?

Over 200 Billion Dollars For Prescription Meds in U.S. Alone

Wow. Just wow.

I'm doing some research this morning for a book I'm working on - about prescription medications. I decided to do a search for how much money Canadians and Americans spent on prescription drugs in the course of one year. The numbers blew me away.

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2013, Americans spent $235,447,332,092 on prescription medications - that's over 200 billion dollars. Canadians, with a much smaller population than in the U.S., spent over 2.2 billion dollars, according to the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association (CGPA).

The issue with so many prescription medications given to so many people is that there are some cases where the medicines may cause more problems than they solve. This could be due to the medicines not being appropriate for the particular patient or the patients may be taking them incorrectly - a major problem in itself.

For prescription medicines to be taken properly, the patients or their caregivers have to understand how to take/give the drug, when to take/give it, what it's supposed to do, and when to stop taking/giving it. Unfortunately, this isn't always as easy as it seems.

A study published in 2009 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine looked at prescription drug use and patient errors. The authors wrote:


"Physicians may assume patients can interpret prescription drug label instructions, yet four out of five patients (79%) in this study misinterpreted one or more of the ten common prescription label instructions they encountered."

For the study, 359 adults (average age 49 years) were asked to look at 10 prescription medicine labels and interpret them. According to the researchers:

"Seventy-eight percent of patients misunderstood one or more instructions, with 37% misunderstanding a minimum of three labels."


When I was working clinically as a nurse, I often advised patients, and I now advise family and friends to always double check their prescriptions with their pharmacist. Pharmacists are front-line healthcare professionals and they are often the easiest person to get hold of for matters like this.

Also, as a nurse, I would (gently!) scold patients who would grab the medications I handed them and just swallow the pills, without looking at them. I used to explain to my patients that they should take a look at what they are receiving and ask questions if the pills don't look like the ones that they normally take. There may be a perfectly good reason for that (change in dose, different manufacturer), but there could also be an error. If a patient questioned a medication I gave, I always took it back and double checked it. Most of the time, everything was fine - but there were the odd times when a mistake had been made somewhere along the chain.

So, moral of the story? Know your prescriptions. Know your meds. Ask questions. It's your right to know what you're putting in your body.