Some of my colleagues and I are participating in The Biggest Loser contest. You know the concept; the person who loses the most weight wins. I’m gonna lose. I’m still eating cereal at night and large roast beef subs, instead of small ones.

According to an article in U.S. News Health, 80% of New Years resolutions will fail. So resolving to lose weight, spend less time in front of your television, giving up smoking, and other vices will most likely result in failure. Why? This is the reason the article states:

Whether you’re feeling anxious, depressed, frustrated, fatigued, weak and out of control, or simply bored, emotional friction (stress) becomes the high-octane fuel of failure.

As the posts on 2017 resolutions are starting to roll out, I have decided to be realistic and not write about my successful resolution; rather I am going to write about how I plan to fail in 2017, particularly when it comes to LinkedIn. This, I reason, will make me feel successful…by failing

So here are my 2017 LinkedIn failures.

1. Being on LinkedIn every day of the week, every week of the year. This includes holidays. At this writing  I’m already failing. I’ve failed at staying off LinkedIn every day for at least seven years. So far so good. Read my post on running the LinkedIn marathon.

2. Criticizing LinkedIn when it pulls a bonehead move. There are ass-kissers who love everything LinkedIn does.There are trolls who bash LI for every little blunder. I consider myself a realist. Nonetheless, I’ll be honest about LI’s mistakes and adequate customer relations.

3. Shamelessly sharing my posts on LinkedIn from Things Career Related, Recruiter.com, LinkedIn Publisher.  However I will try my best to share my connection’s posts more often. Read to Share is golden.

4. Letting go of one of my stringent principles of NOT accepting default invites from LinkedIn members who don’t send personal invites. I apologize, Mom, but you didn’t send a personalized invite.

5. Offering LinkedIn etiquette advice. The hypocrite I am, I’ll still tell people how to act on LinkedIn, including how often to share updates. Don’t do what I do, do what I say. Note: I’ve been called by some a “LinkedIn Etiquette Police.”

6. Staying within the limited commercial searches LinkedIn has imposed. Although I use this feature in my LinkedIn workshops at a nonprofit career center, I don’t make it to the last workshop of the month without seeing, “Bob, you’ve reached the commercial use limit on search.”

7. Participating in Groups as much as I should. I’m sorry, I can’t get excited about the changes LinkedIn made approximately a year ago to this feature. Furthermore, the people I ask if they’ve been using groups mostly respond with a negative.

8. Reaching out to more people after connecting with them on LinkedIn. If you’re supposed to reach out to every LinkedIn connection, I guess this will be an epic failure for me. I’ll try to schedule times to talk with people after I get out of work, but I don’t see this improving at a great rate. An introversion-type thing?

9. Persuading my LinkedIn clients to use the platform four days a week. They think this is overdoing it, but I tell them it will help them immensely in their job search. I also tell them being on LinkedIn once a week is even better, while also warning them against becoming obsessed like me. (Related to #1.) But LinkedIn isn’t for everyone.

If resolutions are 80% likely to fail, I’ve decided that I will not fail…at least when it comes to LinkedIn. Other resolutions I’ve made, which will fail, are to lose weight by joining the Biggest Loser competition at work, getting rid of clothes I no longer wear, and start new projects at home.

I’m interested in knowing if there are some LinkedIn resolutions you know you’ll fail. I’d like to add them to this list.

Photo, Flickr, Carrie