"New Years Resolutions Are To Be Broken" - UIA, Minister Tumwesigye

I’ve always been miffed about New Year’s resolutions. Welcoming in the New Year for most people means doing just that - creating a New Year’s resolution. Starting from scratch at the beginning of the year offers a fresh start and a clean slate, and most people take this opportunity to create a resolution. Many seize the chance to set a new goal as an attempt to get rid of a bad habit or begin a healthier lifestyle, such as quitting smoking or losing weight.

January 1st, The Start Of Resolutions That Get Broken After A month Or So

Although the original goal and thought behind setting their resolution is good, typically by mid-January about 50% of all those ‘New Year Resolutioners’ will have already given up. They leave their resolutions to fall to the wayside and out of all the people who had made a resolution, only 8% will actually accomplish them. Below are three are three things so research tells me, to take into consideration when making resolutions. 

1.       Start Small

Make resolutions that you can keep.

2.       Write It Down

Write your resolutions down in a place where you can remind yourself daily of your intentions.

3.       Make It Public

Let your friends and family know about your resolution and goals. It will help keep you accountable and on track. You are less likely to fail if you have a support system around you.

Will A Resolutions List Keep You On The Straight And Narrow For A Year?

In 2004, the peeps at Uganda Investment Authority – then led by Dr Francis Ssebowa, came up with a resolution of their own – to start two car production plants in the country. And in keeping with the above three pronged New Year’s resolution list, they did write it down and they did make it public. However, one thing they didn’t do, was to heed the first point on the list – START SMALL.

Conferring with people in the car industry, a car manufacturing plant can cost ssomewhere on the wrong side of $1 billion. It costs nearly that much just to get a new model into production; and it takes more than just designing and tooling to run a car company. Tesla, an American car company is burning through over $1 million a day just to get the Model 3 production line up to speed. And UIA had grand ideas of having two plants?

Broken UIA Resolution - 300 Cars Never Rolled Off The Production Line Each Month

To their credit, UIA didn’t give themselves one year, but 8-years and the 8-year mandate expired last year by which, they said 300 cars would be rolling off the production line every month. But I guess you need not have gone to Makerere University Business School or work for Spear Motors or Toyota to know that Dr Ssebowa and his UIA were living in fantasyland.

Not to be outdone, enter Elioda Tumwesigye, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation who in the second week of January this year made a resolution of his own. But Tumwesigye did not follow the three point New Year’s resolution list. Okay, so he wrote it down and made it public but like Dr Ssebowa before him, he neglected the first and most important of the three rules – START SMALL.

In fantasyland resolution talk, Tumwesigye told Daily Monitor that: “There will be a production plant that will start rolling off solar powered buses by the end of the year”. The editors at Daily Monitor have obviously seen so many resolutions broken – especially by politicians, that the story didn’t even warrant making the front pages. Rather, it came as 97-word news brief in the upcountry news section.

We Shall Remind Tumwesigye Come End Of Year

Starting small is key. If Tumwesigye New Year resolution was to build production plants that would roll off say 300 wheelbarrows a month or 1,500 bicycles a bicycles a month, then that would have been a resolution well within his grasp and one which, I would applaud him for come the close of the year when he delivered.

Photos: Daily Monitor, Felix Ainebyoona, Tide.com, Time.com