Every year I spend some time attempting to create a list of New Year's resolutions. There is something slightly energising in attempting to make a fresh start at the turn of the calendar.Armed with great intentions I hope to march forth a “much” better man only to realise it might be better to settle for being a “slightly” better man.I don't need to tell you that resolutions don't necessarily translate into action. Knowledge doesn't necessarily change behaviour; therefore simple promises to ourselves may not be enough, as we easily slide back to our old habits. But in the spirit of positive change I offer some investing resolutions I hope to adhere to and practise this year.Just five, as doing too much tends to overwhelm a person and commit them to failure. In investing, your own worst enemy is often yourself:1 I will do nothing. In investing sometimes this is your best bet. Investors these days tend to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Valuations and returns are measured by days and even minutes. Sadly the “investor class” has almost all but disappeared. In fact in the 1950s and 1960s, investors in stocks sold on the New York Stock Exchange used to hold securities for an average of seven or eight years. Now the average holding period is about six months! People now want to see results quickly and they want to be seen “doing something”. We tend to all have a bias toward action, even if it is harmful to our returns. Patience and discipline are needed for successful investing. If I can't find anything to invest in then it's best for me to do nothing at all. Winnie-the-Pooh said it best: “Never underestimate the value of doing nothing.”2 I will keep a diary. Have you ever bought a stock and watched it soar in price? Then smiled and patted yourself on the back for making such a brilliant pick even though the stock soared for the WRONG reason or one you never even considered? I have. We all suffer from a bias that leads to extreme brevity in accurate financial memory: self-attribution bias. This bias essentially creates a habit of attributing good outcomes to our skill and bad outcomes to someone or something else. Sadly, I feel investors should be far more introspective so that they can learn from their mistakes. A real-time investment diary can help us hold true to our thoughts at the time of investing and can help us understand when we are lucky or good.3 I will change my mind. When you are as stubborn as me this may be the toughest one. One thing we all tend to suffer from is loss aversion. We hate losing money more than two-and-a-half times more than making money. We also seem to believe that a loss is not a loss until we realise it. This creates a very counter-productive environment where we hold onto losing stocks and sell winning stocks more frequently known as the disposition effect. Over-optimism, overconfidence and even self-attribution biases lend us to believe that our losers “will come back”. Sadly, various studies have shown that winners sold tend to outperform the losers held by an average of 3.4 percent per annum (Terrance Odean). We tend to hang on to our views for far too long, often only because we expended a great deal of past effort coming up with them.4 I will kill my investments. In others words, I will seek information and facts that offer disconfirming evidence for my investments. I'll try and overcome that confirmation bias we all have. You know what I'm talking about: we have a tendency to cite only facts and figures that confirm our view and discount and even ignore those that do not. Bruce Berkowitz of Fairholme Capital Management said it best: “We look at companies, count the cash, and try to kill the company…We spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong with a company whether it's a recession, stagflation, zooming interest rates or a dirty bomb going off. We try every which way to kill our best ideas. If we can't kill it, maybe we're onto something.”5 I will be a contrarian. It's much better to avoid the herd. We all know this …right? Evidence from countless bubbles and countless experiments would suggest it's not so easy. We are wired to feel great pain expressing views not in consensus or even with your own group. Imagine expressing a view on how you feel Apple is a poor investment. What if you were a raging bear on China? Not easy. True value investors seek out pain. They look through the rubble of the stock market disasters to grab investments others have given up on. Keynes pointed out that “the central principle of investment is to go contrary to general opinion on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merits, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive”.Although I have cited these resolutions in regards to investing, truth be told they would be good to apply in all aspects of life.Thanks for reading.