Some people use the new year to overhaul their lives. Others (me) begrudgingly accept that if they manage to drink a glass of water before their morning coffee, they are already doing quite well.

On a cruise, the gap between grand intentions and reality is even wider. You may board with a mental list that includes sunrise yoga, daily laps of the promenade and “only taking the stairs”. Two days in, you are having dessert with breakfast and considering a tactical nap.

So, in the spirit of kindness to future you, here are a few cruise resolutions you might actually keep successfully.

1. Use the spa once without talking yourself out of it

You know how this goes. You pack swimwear that is “for the spa”. You walk past the spa reception daily. You read the leaflet. You do absolutely nothing about it.

A modest resolution is simply this: book one treatment or one thermal suite visit and actually turn up. No “I should really be making the most of the port time”, no “I will do it if there is a discount on day five”.

One hour in a vaguely scented room while someone else worries about the knots in your shoulders is a much more realistic form of self care than promising to come home “a whole new person”. Also, if the ship has a relaxation area with floor to ceiling windows, it is an excellent way to sit and stare at the sea while pretending to be busy.

2. Try a different breakfast every sea day

Morning on a cruise ship is full of ambition. This is when people say things like “I might just stick to fruit and yoghurt” while standing in front of a buffet that has nine types of pastry.

Instead of promising to “be good”, set yourself a small experiment. Each sea day, change one thing. Cereal and fruit one morning, made to order omelette the next, pancakes after that, slightly unhinged three course breakfast on the final sea day just to see how it feels.

3. Watch one sunrise or one sunset properly

You don't need to see every dawn. You are on holiday, not on a navy rota. But making time for one unhurried sunrise or sunset at sea is both easy and memorable.

Pick your moment in advance, check the daily programme for the time, then give yourself an extra ten minutes to find a good spot on deck. Leave your phone in your pocket for the first few minutes and just watch the light shift over the water and the outline of the coast, if there is one.

After that you can take as many photos as you like. You will probably end up with 47 near identical images of pinkish clouds and a railing. The important bit is that you will remember at least one evening where everything stopped for half an hour and all you had to do was look.

4. Read the daily programme beyond the front page

The daily programme is where good intentions go to be skimmed. People glance at the headline events, notice the show in the theatre and possibly the trivia quiz, then leave it on the desk under a small landslide of shore excursion tickets.

This year, vow to sit down with a hot drink and actually read it. Hidden in the small print you will often find quiet things that suit you better than the obvious big-ticket activities: a short talk on the port’s history, a behind the scenes tour, a wine tasting with fewer than twenty people, or a classical duo playing in a corner of a bar where nobody shouts.

Pick one thing a day that is not simply “turn up for dinner”. If you hate it, you never have to go again. If you love it, you have just upgraded your sea days for very little effort.

5. Walk the long way at least once a day

This is not about tracking 10,000 steps in a day. It is about small decisions. Instead of waiting for a lift for three decks, take the stairs once a day. Instead of cutting through the same indoor route, go outside and walk the promenade for a lap on your way to coffee.

It won't cancel out the third dessert, and that's fine. What it does do is give you a few quiet minutes to register the weather, the colour of the sea and the ship itself, rather than only ever seeing it as a series of points between you and the buffet.

You also get to feel mildly smug for approximately three minutes, which is one of life’s underrated pleasures.

6. Order one thing you do not usually drink

Cruise bar menus are full of things you have never heard of. Most people look at them once, panic and order the same glass of house wine they drink at home.

Make a small pact with yourself to try one new drink over the course of the trip. It could be a mocktail with an alarming garnish, a regional wine you keep seeing in port, or the cocktail that sounds like it was named during a late night marketing meeting.

If it is dreadful, you have a story. If it is good, you have found a new way to make sailaway more interesting.

7. Get off the ship in every port, even briefly

When the weather is dodgy or the port looks industrial, it is very tempting to stay on board and treat the day as an extra sea day. Occasionally that is the right call. Most of the time, a short wander ashore is worth the minor faff.

This does not have to be a full day tour. It can be a simple stroll through the port area, a coffee in the first café that looks vaguely inviting, or a quick look at whatever view the locals seem to be walking towards.

You will pick up at least one small impression of the place that is more interesting than “the view from deck 12”. You also get to appreciate the ship as a floating base, which is half the fun.

8. Pick one thing to learn and vaguely stick to it

“Learn a language” is a terrible resolution. “Pick up three phrases and actually use them” is realistic.

Before you sail, look up a couple of words in the language of the region you are visiting. Thank you, please, hello, goodbye and the local equivalent of “two coffees” are a decent start. Commit to using them at least once a day in port.

You will not become fluent and nobody expects you to. What you will do is shift the tone of a few tiny interactions, which makes both you and the person on the other side of the counter feel better about life for about fifteen seconds.

9. Sit somewhere different on the ship

Everyone has a default spot. The armchair by the window in the quiet bar. The same table in the buffet. The same lounger that is almost, but not quite, in the shade.

A very gentle resolution is to deliberately sit somewhere new each day. Different bar, different side of the deck, different lounge. Ships are designed with more nooks and corners than most people ever use, and the atmosphere changes dramatically between them.

You may discover that the place you thought of as “the noisy bar” is completely civilised at 4pm, or that there is a tiny reading room you had never noticed. At worst, you spend half an hour people watching from a new angle.

10. Accept that you will not do everything and enjoy what you do manage

The quiet enemy of a good cruise is the feeling that you should be squeezing something into every minute. You are presented with a list of activities and ports and dining options, and it is easy to treat the whole thing like an exam.

The most useful resolution is simply to stop keeping score. Pick a handful of things you genuinely want to do, let the rest go and refuse to feel guilty about an afternoon spent in a chair looking at nothing in particular.

If, by the end of the trip, you have used the spa once, tried a new breakfast, walked the long way round and watched the sky change colour over the sea at least once, you have already kept more resolutions than most of us manage on land.

The rest can wait for next year.