Take the fear out of New Year.

 A whole New Year stretching out in front of you? I can sum it up in one word: potential. This could be the year to achieve all your goals on the home front. But don’t make resolutions; you’ll only break them. What you need is a plan.

 You should plan to start small and work up. After all, you’ve got all year. So, seeing that it’s hot here in Australia now and you don’t want to get tired so soon after Christmas, make a list. Three columns should be enough: ‘Can do in a day’, ‘Can do in a weekend’, ‘Can do in my dreams’. ‘Can do in a day’ jobs are easy things: for instance, making a list. You can do that in a day, have a drink and congratulate yourself on a great start to the New Year. Now, a list is a very personal thing. You don’t have to show it to anybody else, but you’ll now you’re working to a plan, which will give you a real sense of purpose. So when you’re on the sun-lounge, pen and paper at the ready and your partner asks, ‘What about all this work you said you were going to do?’ You can respond with a mysterious, ‘I’m doing it now’.

 ‘Can do in a day’ jobs are mostly routine maintenance: lawn cutting, shrub pruning, weed pulling, door shaving – and any other problem areas you can think of. The trick with this list is to make sure the job takes a day at the absolute outside. Allow time for a stretch, plenty of refreshment breaks and time to watch TV.

 ‘Can do in a weekend’ are the larger projects. The room-painting, patio-paving sorts of jobs. Those who are gluttons for renovations will willingly take on such a project every weekend, with a couple of ‘Can do in a day’ jobs on week nights as well. However, if your home is in reasonable condition – after the kids have gone to bed and the washing up is done – you don’t need to bust a gutter. One weekend project a year may be enough. One a month and you could, say, paint every room in your house this year...by spring. That would still leave three free weekends a month to visit friends and be overly sympathetic about lack of progress with their place.

 So what about the ‘Can do in my dreams’ list? What ever you put in here should be totally unattainable. Building a large-scale model of the Opera House, cooking the world’s largest lamington, creating the weed-free lawn – things that really would take time and skill far greater than mere mortals could hope for.

 But why, I hear you ask, why must our dreams be so grand? Because you can do everything else in a day or a weekend. It’s only a matter of stringing a few ‘Can do in a day’ jobs together with ‘Can do in a weekend’ projects. For example, a brick garage. Forming up for a concrete floor, you can do in a weekend. Concreting the floor you can do the next weekend. Building the walls a bricklayer will string out – literally – for a week. If you’ve got the skills, it would take a weekend, two if it’s big and you get rained off. The roof, if you use timber with aluminium sheeting, a weekend or so. You don’t even have to do it on consecutive weekends. It’s what’s builders call programming, it’s what the rest of us call not biting off more than you can chew. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day...and the Romans didn’t have public holidays and New Year sales to distract them.

 So, your list for the year can be a wish list. Do the ‘Can do in a day’ stuff for a few weeks and you’ll find no task is too scary. And as you stand in your new attic room this time next year, you can gaze out of the window at a weed-free lawn. OK who am I kidding? You’ll have to ask Santa for that one.