I sometimes suck at keeping New Years resolutions. Also, I currently care a lot about what people think of me. So, to leverage one vice against the other, I'm publicly sharing resolutions and monthly progress here.

Last thought before you dive in: nothing beats having a clear direction. A clear direction – professional, academic, or otherwise – is the lattice on which all other goals hang.

Planning

Process

There are many methods available to plan your New Years resolutions and goals. Here are three approaches I've found helpful.

Past Year Review

  1. "Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
  2. Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
  3. For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
  4. Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
  5. Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2022. These are the people and things you *know* make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense."

Big Rocks Matrix

  1. Define the categories in your life. For example: physical health, mental health, financial, social, spiritual, relational, etc.
  2. For each category, answer the following questions: A. What's right? B. What's wrong? C. What's confusing? D. What's missing?
  3. Assess all the input data and decide which actions you'd like to continue, what you'd like to stop, what you'd like to clarify, and what you'd like to add.
  4. Click the link above for an example matrix. You can also copy the Google Doc and complete as desired. 

New Month Resolutions

  1. View each month as a mini 30-day challenge
  2. Identify which goals you'd like to achieve each month.
  3. Identify which habits will support those goals per day.
  4. Do those habits. 
  5. At the end of each month, look at the data and refine your habits, goals, and general approach. 

I used a combination of the above three methods. I've reflected on the past year, identified what to improve, clarified goals, then decided on the specific habits required to reach my goals.  

In 2022, I'm going to approach each month as its own feedback loop of 30 days. If a goal is missed one week, I will then double up on the habits the following week in order to hit all goals by month-end. At the end of ~30 days, I'll reflect, identify problems areas, tweak, and repeat. Lastly, there is an overarching theme to each year. This year's theme: ship sh*t.

Principles

Here are the key principles that guided my thought process in identifying final resolutions.

  • Process > Outcome
    • Rather than big goals, focus on great systems. To that end, I'll be using a Habit tracker app to measure progress.
  • Weekly > Daily
    • Better to ship weekly for most things, because some days require extraordinary focus on a single thing. Execution in 24 hours can be tough; execution in 168 hours is easier.
  • Low Friction
    • Resolutions must be simple to do anywhere, anytime.
  • Stretch Goals
    • Resolutions should be difficult enough to stretch existing capability.

Resolutions

My 2022 New Years resolutions are:

  1. Ship Sh*t

    • Good, bad, or ugly - if I make something, I publish it, post it, show it, or share it. No being shy or using the excuse, "It's not good enough." Ship Sh*t, for better or worse. This is the overarching theme of this year and was inspired by Ed Sheeran.

  2. Read at least 1 book/week.

    • Goal is to read 52 books this year at the rate of 1 book/week. You can see this year's progress here.

  3. Write at least 1 essay/week.

    • Goal is to write 12 good essays this year. To that end, I'm going to write 52 total essays this year (some of them will be sh*t; some will be good).

  4. Get to & maintain ~10% body fat.

    • Goal is to implement the weekly habits necessary to remain at ~10% BF, rather than just hit it and bounce back to a higher BF. You can read more about how to approach fitness in detail here. Briefly, my approach is:
      • fast until 12pm each day (excludes black coffee)
      • 1g of protein per pound of lean body mass/day
      • 500kcal+ daily resistance training/day
      • 5g creatine & a multivitamin/day
      • 500kcal deficit/day
      • 1gal/water/day

  5. Review flashcards 10 minutes/day.

    • I'd like to remember more of what I read, which is why this goal exists. When reading books, I take notes and convert them to flashcards. Cards include everything from cooking techniques to physics equations to poetry and quotes. This is inspired by Quantum Country and Augmenting Cognition.

  6. Blame myself for everything.

    • This is an exercise in taking responsibility. When bad things happen to me, I might not be the one to blame for everything, but if I look carefully enough at a bad situation, there are probably things I could learn from and improve on.

  7. Be funnier.

    • This might be a lost cause. Nonetheless, I'm going to write 10 jokes/day to channel my inner Pete Davidson.

  8. Connect with 7 new people each week.

    • This means to connect with 7 new people from my existing 'social graph' each week. I'd like to strengthen the quality of some relationships and believe this exercise perfect for doing just that.

  9. Write 1 journal entry/week.

    • Continue the habit of being reflective.

  10. Meditate for 15min/day

    • This is to continue to build on what I learned at the mindfulness retreat last year.

Progress

Progress will be measured as a total percentage of goals hit each month.

  • January 2022: 4%
  • February 2022: 21%
  • March 2022:
  • April 2022:
  • May 2022:  
  • June 2022:
  • July 2022:
  • August 2022:
  • September 2022:
  • October 2022:
  • November 2022:
  • December 2022:

New Years Resolutions 2022