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Nathan James Page
1. Save money
The festive period has forced you to dig deeper into your overdraft than you ever thought possible. You always promise yourself you'll take a packed lunch into work and stop buying fancy £3-a-bag popcorn. Realistically, though, the only way to save money in London is to move to a zone with double digits and live in someone's shed. Or at least, that's what you tell yourself come January 15 as you spend a week's rent on expertly popped salted caramel and cracked black pepper air.
2. Exercise more
The 'new year, new you' mantra wouldn't be complete without purchasing three exercise DVDs and some swanky new gym gear. But by the time you've got in from work, located your new trainers at the bottom of your flatmate's wardrobe and just managed to keep down a green juice with a number of suspicious lumps in it, there's only time for two things. The first: a vague update on social media about going for a run, and the second: sleep.
Nathan James Page
3. Take in more culture
In a city as vibrant as London, deciding to do more cultural stuff seems like an easy win. You might lock this resolution down by smugly filling your diary with plans to visit museums, watch weird Continental films and eat in restaurants where you get more than one size of fork. But you live right next to a Pret and there's a nice big multiplex down the road, showing back-to-back romcoms in all their mainstream glory. Now where did you put that jam-packed diary of cultural excursions? Oh yeah, there it is: under that Nando's menu.
4. Be less stressed
You awake on January 1 after a lavender-and-warm-milk-induced sleep, ready to take on the capital with your newfound zen and an aromatherapy gift set. Then the ticket machine rejects your Oyster card in rush hour, you discover your favourite pop-up seems to have popped down and your flatmate has grassed on you to the landlord for hamster-sitting for a friend. Happily you get home to discover that the same flatmate has also drunk your essential oils, mistaking them for flavoured coffee syrups. See? Zen isn't that hard to achieve after all.
Nathan James Page
5. Work less
When you declared to the office you would be leaving at 5.30pm on the dot from now on unless there's an emergency - and let's face it, there aren't many life-or-death situations at London's seventeenth-biggest oak furniture suppliers - no one doubted you. Now three weeks, five 8pm finishes and just one lunchbreak later, you can't remember the last time you didn't wake up at 3am screaming ëtiiiimberrrrrr!í
By Jessica Brown, who has resolved to stop dobbing her flatmates in to the landlord in 2016.
Take a look at the top five London exercisers
Illustrations: Nathan James Page