How an "old year's resolution" can help you follow through on your New Year's resolution

Mark Canada is the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Indiana University Kokomo and Christina Downey is a professor of psychology at Indiana University. "But, on the whole, tho' I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it."

If you've made a New Year's resolution, your plot for self-improvement probably kicks into gear sometime on Jan. 1, when the hangover wears off and the quest for the "new you" begins in earnest.