My main new year’s resolution for 2017 is pretty much the same as always: stop eating Christmas cookies, cut back on the drinking and get back to the gym.

This resolve tends to stick for much of the year — only during the next holiday season does everything invariably fall apart again. Maybe I should consider making this a pre-Thanksgiving resolution.

I have had some other resolutions on my mind this week, though, and it struck me that they may be of wider applicability for a year that so many people are approaching with a hangover — literal, metaphorical or both — and a lot of trepidation. Also, while I do not really believe that new year’s resolutions are the key to ending the productivity-growth slowdown that has been weighing on the American economy for the past decade or more, they cannot hurt, right? So here goes.

Go outside

Modern professional life generally happens indoors. That is inevitable, but for me staying in the building often means getting stuck in a rut, or even a funk. Just walking around the block shakes things up a little, but I am lucky enough to have a job where I can count wandering around a California alfalfa field or a Chinese theme park as work. So why am I not doing that more often? And on weekends, why am I not spending more time exploring the gigantic, endlessly surprising city I live in? Seriously, I need to get out more. Maybe you do, too.

Talk to human beings, in person

This is obviously essential for a journalist, but it seems kind of important for all of us. Virtual interaction is efficient. It can open up new worlds. It is also incomplete and often one-dimensional. Interacting with data can be great, too. But it comes with its own biases and blinders. Actual conversations take time. They complicate things. That is why they are so important.

Be generous

You cannot be generous to everyone. But it is too easy to use that as an excuse not to be generous to anyone. I am not just talking about panhandlers on the subway — although I am talking about panhandlers on the subway. It is also that friend whose book manuscript is waiting to be read, that family member who could use a little encouragement and help, that good idea that might wither without some attention and promotion. I’m never going to be another Adam Grant, the tireless Wharton School professor who has made helpfulness into a personal and professional credo. But I do think Grant is right that generosity benefits the generous — which is, of course, a terribly ungenerous reason to be generous, but, well ...

Have a plan

Benjamin Franklin famously made a habit of asking himself every morning: “What good shall I do this day?” After that he would, “contrive [the] day’s business, and take the resolution of the day”. This is the basic rule of personal effectiveness: have some idea of what you aim to accomplish before you head out to face the day, or week or year. As a self-help sceptic, I’m a little alarmed to realise that I am now basically writing a self-help column. But I am also alarmed at how often I start my working day or week without any kind of plan. Plans are not necessarily for sticking to. It’s just that without them, all you can do is react. This goes for organisations, too.

Go out on a limb

No, I have not yet chosen the limb — or, more likely, limbs. I will look for sturdy ones. But at a time when the consensus view has been wrong again and again, departing from that consensus seems like almost a safe bet. This is not the same as being contrary; it means coming up with unique, independent arguments — or, short of that, giving attention to those who have. I am big on being reasonable, but reasonableness always risks settling into consensus-seeking caution. And what fun is that?

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg View columnist