I love this idea; I've been fortunate, I suppose, to have a spring birthday and observe Rosh Hashanah in the fall (typically around September), so I wind up with ~3 major natural "reflection points": The Gregorian calendar change, my age change, and the Jewish calendar change. I don't always make those changes, but I think it at least has helped me limit the damage from my "what the hell" moments when I've failed at a goal to the next few months, saying "try again at the next milestone" rather than waiting until the following January.
First off, I'm super excited about the TED talk. Acho's book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man was a huge mind shift for me and a helpful resource for others.
Second, the whole "revisit the New Year's resolutions" later point is huge. We haven't iterated well mid-year but our family pattern has been to evaluate what happened in the previous year (wrote about it here on Substack a couple of weeks ago) before even reporting on success with the goals. Really helpful post here: I'll check out Cautionary Tales too (second recommendation in 2 months on that).
David, I liked the different perspective on resolutions. Approach goals versus avoidance goals and whether they're mutually exclusive...not necessarily. Whatever the case, goals must be specific.
I don’t have New Year’s resolutions; I have projects.
One that I started near the end of December (because the end and beginning of the years overlap & meld for me) is to read one sentence of Harry Potter 3 in Japanese each day, looking up & writing out all the kanji.
It doesn’t matter if I stop, because that means I’ll be trying something else.
Last year I decided (in February?) to pick out a new recipe each week, get the ingredients and make it. I wanted to try new foods, to bring new things into my life. It gave me something to look forward to. It didn’t stick for many months, but the spirit is still there: oooh I could pick out a new recipe!
This is a great approach. You're definitely getting the granularity that apparently makes resolutions stickier. But, as you said, these are really projects. Your approach is pretty similar to my own "book of small experiments" approach. Regarding writing out a sentence a day in kanji, that sounds like it would be really calming. Sometimes I find working on something small, slowly, to be really meditative.
The connection, though, is that it was Oliver Burkeman’s post on New Year’s resolutions last year that inspired me with the recipe one.
What’s calming about the kanji project is knowing what to do. Having something to turn to. (Unlike homework, which I no longer do. It’s too different each time, with so many components requiring the internet, the computer, a screen that I can no longer see…) Otherwise, it’s a lot of work. An hour or longer for one sentence.
Gosh I completely forgot about that conversation with Austin, which is interesting given that I'm a huge fan of his work. And, speaking of my fandom: Burkeman! I actually took one of his two-day online courses, and even just the way he delivered it was soothing. ....Please forgive me if I'm forgetting something, but I'm curious about "a screen I can longer see."
Oh, the screen I can no longer see just refers to the phone screen and my aging eyes.
I listened to that interview with Austin last night. You also talk about the structures you find in fiction and take inspiration from. I’m wondering if the structures I find in story-strong video games are also different, or whether the video game experience itself makes the stories feel more intense (because it’s much more you than in a novel?).
Did I ever mention that I watched, on YouTube, a video in which someone strung together all the story scenes from Horizon Zero Dawn, and it was like the best movie I saw that year.
🤔🤔🤔 If you did, I‘d be interested in hearing more. Will take a look, if it’s still up on YouTube.
I’m replaying The Cruel King and the Great Hero, which I like very much for the story and the hand-drawn graphics. But the game play is kind of slow. I wonder, though, if it would work as well without the gameplay where the young girl [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] her foster father.
Such a great read! I went back to read the post from 3 years ago, and it was cool to see you reflect on a resolution about late night snacking. After reading all this discussion, I have to ask: what's a resolution your making? Are you trying to make it granular? Is it an approach goal or an avoidance goal? Any chance Tim would be willing to share one too? Thanks as always.
Ya know, I have to say, kicking the late-night snacking mostly stuck! That said, I was afforded a change of physical environment, which I may have conflated too easily with a general turning of the page. Hard to know, but whatever the case, that was a long running bad habit and it's basically gone. Regarding resolutions generally, I'm actually not much of a New Year's resolution guy. My thing is my "book of small experiments," which I know I've mentioned in various places, but not sure in this newsletter. And I put something in there I want to "test," so to speak (learn or try out), at least every other month. And it is often quite granular because of the way I do it. It might be "I want to learn more about X job," and so the "experiment" is I have to find a person in that job and talk to them, so it gives me an actionable thing. Sometimes the "experiment" that comes from the goal isn't quite so narrow. One of the best ever was when I wanted to try more structurally diverse writing, and the experiment became taking a beginner's online fiction-writing course. That turned out to have a huge impact on my work. So that's kind of my system. When I was much younger, I think I was more apt to set longer-term, more nebulous goals. But now I've been doing my "book of small experiments" thing for some years now, and found it really fruitful. Many of the experiments amount to little or nothing, but every once in a while there's a big impact. I guess a few years ago the book and the new year coincided, and I decided to spread some volunteer time across a few different organizations, and to use that time to decide which I then wanted to put all of that time into starting in the second half of the year. So I guess that lined up with a new year, but I think it was more driven by the book of small experiments habit than the new year. ...My most effective avoidance goal was probably when I decided I would never again fight with people on Twitter. Avoidance worked pretty well in that case. What about you?? And I will ask Tim! Thanks to the UK parkrun system, Tim surprised himself by becoming a habitual runner, so I know he has running goals now. (That recreational system also helped Georgia Bell: she came to the US for grad school and ran a bit at Cal, but was always injured; went on to a career in cyber security; did some parkruns during Covid and realized if she cross-trained with cycling she wouldn't get hurt, and she just won bronze in the 1500 in Paris!)
Hey, sorry for the slow response. For some reason I didn't get an email letting me know you'd responded! First off, all time parenthetical that I know you'd said before but I'd forgotten so thank you. Anyway, yes I've heard you mention that book before, and this tracks. I should've known that's what you'd say! I think it'd be a good goal for me to try to adopt.
As for mine, one is always to read 52 books (2023 was a success, last year was just short). Another is to teach myself to like mushrooms (and then pickles if I succeed). But the biggest one is I tried to think about some of my favorite/most meaningful memories of the past year, and most of the ones I think will be most enduring were from traveling to be with good friends/family (things like staying with friends, a wedding, staying with my brother to watch his senior day). I did that a few times, and they were such fun times that left me feeling closer to the people I was with and with some great times to look back on. So I think I want to crash with friends for a weekend a few times this year (and extend the offer in return). One friend and I are going to try to visit one presidential library together for a weekend each summer (for example) and another group of friends and I want to make a great weekend in Cleveland last year an annual thing. The dad of one of my best friends once told me the thing he wish he knew when he was my age was the value of compound interest of friendship, which he clarified to mean basically was how rewarding really long friendships have become from small annual traditions he and friends have been doing for decades. Sorry I'm getting a bit ramble-y, but I guess in my mid-20s I want to try to start the compounding now.
I'm not really sure what to say about this other than: what about the mushrooms that sometimes come with sushi?? (Shiitake probably?) Come on, those are delicious. I feel like most mushrooms are just pretty bland, so I don't get why so many people don't like them. Perhaps I just don't taste whatever it is that turns others off. ...No really, though, I'm bemused at how wise (and well read) you are at such a relatively young age. And that phrase "compound interest of friendship"...[chef's kiss]. Were you always a big reader? ....as an aside, my first "book of small experiments" project this year was (broad): seek out embodied experience with strangers; (specific experiment): dance class. The more autonomy I've had in my own life and work, the less I've had collective experiences with strangers, and I realized I miss it.
Haha I think mushrooms are a mental block for me (same with pickles and olives). I'm not sure if I don't like them or if I just don't think I like them. The current plan is what you suggested where I Trojan Horse them in other foods I like (like sushi) and then slowly wean myself off the sushi. (This worked with tomatoes, where sun-dried tomatoes where my gateway drug tomato.)
But isn't that turn of phrase so good? That one will stick with me for a while. I was a big reader until high school and college workloads crowded it out, but now it feels so enriching for life and has been a really fun way to connect with people. (Also, the one thing it seems like all smart people have in common is that they are readers, and I want to be like them.)
Dancing is a great one. Last year I went to a few friends' wedding for the first time (finally hitting that age) so one of my resolutions last year was actually to learn 10 dance moves haha. I think I got like 4.5, which was technically a failure but definitely was more than enough for some golden moments in the middle of the dance circle.
Great topic, David!, and I'm once again itching to add something to the discussion:
Has anyone read Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's "How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work"? It was an absolute game changer for me regarding the topic of change. The two Havard developmental psychologists unravel, at least for me, the nagging question of why New Year's resolutions so often fail – in Tim's words above, "If you have 100 people who start who wouldn't have started, and only five of them stick with it, well, you just had five people who now have an exercise habit who didn't. So that's a win. But still, you do kind of wonder about the other 95." Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey analyse the situation and offer their help to the other 95.
They kick off their introduction with the question "What do you really want ... and what will you do to keep from getting it?"
They offer a new angle from which to view the process (or attempt) of change, both personal as well as organisational or societal. In their own words, from the second paragraph of their introduction: "if we want deeper understanding of the prospect of change, we must pay closer attention to our own powerful inclinations n o t to change. This attention may help us discover within ourselves the force and beauty of a hidden immune system, the dynamic process by which we tend to prevent change, by which we manufacure continuously the antigens of change. If we can unlock this system, we release new energies on behalf of new ways of seeing and being."
They go on to transcend the usual dualism of a force for change and a counterforce preventing that change (usually fuelling New Year's resolutions and the basis of so many guidebooks on how to change), with the force to be strengthened and the counterforce to be weakened, outwitted, fooled, bribed, fought down or in whatever other way overcome. Instead, they take up a respectful, curious, even appreciative stance towards this counterforce, a stance asking what the reasons of this part of ourselves is to posit itself in this way, to counter the intentions of our immediately conscious self (and sometimes also to counter our health, our job prospects, career perspectives etc.). With this move, the playing field available to the individual, organisation or society to pitch for change alters and possibilities for lasting, long-term change come into view.
They acknowledge that it is really difficult to take that stance. Again in their own words: "one of the things that makes gaining this understanding so difficult is that we tend to be held captive by our own immune systems. We live i n s i d e them. We do not 'have them;' they 'have us.' We cannot see them because we are too caught up in them." They are usually operating from our unconscious.
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's book is about accompanying the reader (and their clients) in their quest to make this unconscious immune system visible, to view it from a respecful and curious distance, with appreciation, and thus gain the freedom to change for real – lastingly and with respect for all aspects and parts of oneself or one's organisation or society involved in the change.
Whether regarding New Year resolutions or in view of how we are continuing to run down our planet, seemingly unable to change our detrimental habits individually, organisationally or as a society: I find this book highly relevant as well as helpful and cannot recommend it enough to anyone interested in the how, why and why not of change.
I’m finding this interesting because I don’t set out to change (and reading this, change sounds really really strenuous), but I, or my behavior, *has* been steadily changing since 2020, when I read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire.
Each new book I read that was somehow related to what our agriculture does to our planet, and then later to us, led to me changing my priorities in buying food. Which I had not set out to do. So it felt effortless at the personal level.
The bit about the immune systems I also find interesting because I’ve also become more aware that I *am* my body, not I *have* a body.
I love this topic! I backed out of a sales career because the constant goals weighed too heavily, but something must have stuck because I love a New Years Resolution - and while I didn’t achieve them all last year, I can see where I failed.
Here are my tips:
1. Write them down. Obvious, but not everyone does. Mine are pinned on my notes app.
2. Review them often, and set them with this in mind. I totally agree with the section on reviewing above. One of mine was to read 24 books, so 2 a month is easy to monitor. Another, get a dog, wasn’t (and wasn’t very realistic either, but that’s another matter).
3. Make them attainable throughout the year. I assume everyone knows about SMART objectives, but this is more - if I ended Feb with only 3 books read, I can catch up. “Arrange a date night every month” can be failed by the 1st Feb.
4. Gamification helps, for me at least. I love maintaining a kindle streak or ticking off every lb lost.
I’m intrigued to know what methods have worked for other people
I love this idea; I've been fortunate, I suppose, to have a spring birthday and observe Rosh Hashanah in the fall (typically around September), so I wind up with ~3 major natural "reflection points": The Gregorian calendar change, my age change, and the Jewish calendar change. I don't always make those changes, but I think it at least has helped me limit the damage from my "what the hell" moments when I've failed at a goal to the next few months, saying "try again at the next milestone" rather than waiting until the following January.
three major natural reflection points...I love that framing Jacob
First off, I'm super excited about the TED talk. Acho's book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man was a huge mind shift for me and a helpful resource for others.
Second, the whole "revisit the New Year's resolutions" later point is huge. We haven't iterated well mid-year but our family pattern has been to evaluate what happened in the previous year (wrote about it here on Substack a couple of weeks ago) before even reporting on success with the goals. Really helpful post here: I'll check out Cautionary Tales too (second recommendation in 2 months on that).
James, thanks so much for this great comment. That's an excellent ritual, and leaving your New Year's post here for others who scroll the comments: https://leadwithclarity.substack.com/p/uniting-your-family-in-shared-goals
David, I liked the different perspective on resolutions. Approach goals versus avoidance goals and whether they're mutually exclusive...not necessarily. Whatever the case, goals must be specific.
Daniel, thanks for reading and for this comment. You concisely captured my own most important takeaways!
I don’t have New Year’s resolutions; I have projects.
One that I started near the end of December (because the end and beginning of the years overlap & meld for me) is to read one sentence of Harry Potter 3 in Japanese each day, looking up & writing out all the kanji.
It doesn’t matter if I stop, because that means I’ll be trying something else.
Last year I decided (in February?) to pick out a new recipe each week, get the ingredients and make it. I wanted to try new foods, to bring new things into my life. It gave me something to look forward to. It didn’t stick for many months, but the spirit is still there: oooh I could pick out a new recipe!
This is a great approach. You're definitely getting the granularity that apparently makes resolutions stickier. But, as you said, these are really projects. Your approach is pretty similar to my own "book of small experiments" approach. Regarding writing out a sentence a day in kanji, that sounds like it would be really calming. Sometimes I find working on something small, slowly, to be really meditative.
Duckduckgoing “david epstein book of small experiments”… >
https://austinkleon.com/2021/12/02/my-chat-with-david-epstein/
The connection, though, is that it was Oliver Burkeman’s post on New Year’s resolutions last year that inspired me with the recipe one.
What’s calming about the kanji project is knowing what to do. Having something to turn to. (Unlike homework, which I no longer do. It’s too different each time, with so many components requiring the internet, the computer, a screen that I can no longer see…) Otherwise, it’s a lot of work. An hour or longer for one sentence.
Gosh I completely forgot about that conversation with Austin, which is interesting given that I'm a huge fan of his work. And, speaking of my fandom: Burkeman! I actually took one of his two-day online courses, and even just the way he delivered it was soothing. ....Please forgive me if I'm forgetting something, but I'm curious about "a screen I can longer see."
Oh, the screen I can no longer see just refers to the phone screen and my aging eyes.
I listened to that interview with Austin last night. You also talk about the structures you find in fiction and take inspiration from. I’m wondering if the structures I find in story-strong video games are also different, or whether the video game experience itself makes the stories feel more intense (because it’s much more you than in a novel?).
Did I ever mention that I watched, on YouTube, a video in which someone strung together all the story scenes from Horizon Zero Dawn, and it was like the best movie I saw that year.
🤔🤔🤔 If you did, I‘d be interested in hearing more. Will take a look, if it’s still up on YouTube.
I’m replaying The Cruel King and the Great Hero, which I like very much for the story and the hand-drawn graphics. But the game play is kind of slow. I wonder, though, if it would work as well without the gameplay where the young girl [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] her foster father.
Having tried out something once makes it into a resource I can fall back on if I need something.
Such a great read! I went back to read the post from 3 years ago, and it was cool to see you reflect on a resolution about late night snacking. After reading all this discussion, I have to ask: what's a resolution your making? Are you trying to make it granular? Is it an approach goal or an avoidance goal? Any chance Tim would be willing to share one too? Thanks as always.
Ya know, I have to say, kicking the late-night snacking mostly stuck! That said, I was afforded a change of physical environment, which I may have conflated too easily with a general turning of the page. Hard to know, but whatever the case, that was a long running bad habit and it's basically gone. Regarding resolutions generally, I'm actually not much of a New Year's resolution guy. My thing is my "book of small experiments," which I know I've mentioned in various places, but not sure in this newsletter. And I put something in there I want to "test," so to speak (learn or try out), at least every other month. And it is often quite granular because of the way I do it. It might be "I want to learn more about X job," and so the "experiment" is I have to find a person in that job and talk to them, so it gives me an actionable thing. Sometimes the "experiment" that comes from the goal isn't quite so narrow. One of the best ever was when I wanted to try more structurally diverse writing, and the experiment became taking a beginner's online fiction-writing course. That turned out to have a huge impact on my work. So that's kind of my system. When I was much younger, I think I was more apt to set longer-term, more nebulous goals. But now I've been doing my "book of small experiments" thing for some years now, and found it really fruitful. Many of the experiments amount to little or nothing, but every once in a while there's a big impact. I guess a few years ago the book and the new year coincided, and I decided to spread some volunteer time across a few different organizations, and to use that time to decide which I then wanted to put all of that time into starting in the second half of the year. So I guess that lined up with a new year, but I think it was more driven by the book of small experiments habit than the new year. ...My most effective avoidance goal was probably when I decided I would never again fight with people on Twitter. Avoidance worked pretty well in that case. What about you?? And I will ask Tim! Thanks to the UK parkrun system, Tim surprised himself by becoming a habitual runner, so I know he has running goals now. (That recreational system also helped Georgia Bell: she came to the US for grad school and ran a bit at Cal, but was always injured; went on to a career in cyber security; did some parkruns during Covid and realized if she cross-trained with cycling she wouldn't get hurt, and she just won bronze in the 1500 in Paris!)
Hey, sorry for the slow response. For some reason I didn't get an email letting me know you'd responded! First off, all time parenthetical that I know you'd said before but I'd forgotten so thank you. Anyway, yes I've heard you mention that book before, and this tracks. I should've known that's what you'd say! I think it'd be a good goal for me to try to adopt.
As for mine, one is always to read 52 books (2023 was a success, last year was just short). Another is to teach myself to like mushrooms (and then pickles if I succeed). But the biggest one is I tried to think about some of my favorite/most meaningful memories of the past year, and most of the ones I think will be most enduring were from traveling to be with good friends/family (things like staying with friends, a wedding, staying with my brother to watch his senior day). I did that a few times, and they were such fun times that left me feeling closer to the people I was with and with some great times to look back on. So I think I want to crash with friends for a weekend a few times this year (and extend the offer in return). One friend and I are going to try to visit one presidential library together for a weekend each summer (for example) and another group of friends and I want to make a great weekend in Cleveland last year an annual thing. The dad of one of my best friends once told me the thing he wish he knew when he was my age was the value of compound interest of friendship, which he clarified to mean basically was how rewarding really long friendships have become from small annual traditions he and friends have been doing for decades. Sorry I'm getting a bit ramble-y, but I guess in my mid-20s I want to try to start the compounding now.
I'm not really sure what to say about this other than: what about the mushrooms that sometimes come with sushi?? (Shiitake probably?) Come on, those are delicious. I feel like most mushrooms are just pretty bland, so I don't get why so many people don't like them. Perhaps I just don't taste whatever it is that turns others off. ...No really, though, I'm bemused at how wise (and well read) you are at such a relatively young age. And that phrase "compound interest of friendship"...[chef's kiss]. Were you always a big reader? ....as an aside, my first "book of small experiments" project this year was (broad): seek out embodied experience with strangers; (specific experiment): dance class. The more autonomy I've had in my own life and work, the less I've had collective experiences with strangers, and I realized I miss it.
Haha I think mushrooms are a mental block for me (same with pickles and olives). I'm not sure if I don't like them or if I just don't think I like them. The current plan is what you suggested where I Trojan Horse them in other foods I like (like sushi) and then slowly wean myself off the sushi. (This worked with tomatoes, where sun-dried tomatoes where my gateway drug tomato.)
But isn't that turn of phrase so good? That one will stick with me for a while. I was a big reader until high school and college workloads crowded it out, but now it feels so enriching for life and has been a really fun way to connect with people. (Also, the one thing it seems like all smart people have in common is that they are readers, and I want to be like them.)
Dancing is a great one. Last year I went to a few friends' wedding for the first time (finally hitting that age) so one of my resolutions last year was actually to learn 10 dance moves haha. I think I got like 4.5, which was technically a failure but definitely was more than enough for some golden moments in the middle of the dance circle.
Great topic, David!, and I'm once again itching to add something to the discussion:
Has anyone read Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's "How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work"? It was an absolute game changer for me regarding the topic of change. The two Havard developmental psychologists unravel, at least for me, the nagging question of why New Year's resolutions so often fail – in Tim's words above, "If you have 100 people who start who wouldn't have started, and only five of them stick with it, well, you just had five people who now have an exercise habit who didn't. So that's a win. But still, you do kind of wonder about the other 95." Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey analyse the situation and offer their help to the other 95.
They kick off their introduction with the question "What do you really want ... and what will you do to keep from getting it?"
They offer a new angle from which to view the process (or attempt) of change, both personal as well as organisational or societal. In their own words, from the second paragraph of their introduction: "if we want deeper understanding of the prospect of change, we must pay closer attention to our own powerful inclinations n o t to change. This attention may help us discover within ourselves the force and beauty of a hidden immune system, the dynamic process by which we tend to prevent change, by which we manufacure continuously the antigens of change. If we can unlock this system, we release new energies on behalf of new ways of seeing and being."
They go on to transcend the usual dualism of a force for change and a counterforce preventing that change (usually fuelling New Year's resolutions and the basis of so many guidebooks on how to change), with the force to be strengthened and the counterforce to be weakened, outwitted, fooled, bribed, fought down or in whatever other way overcome. Instead, they take up a respectful, curious, even appreciative stance towards this counterforce, a stance asking what the reasons of this part of ourselves is to posit itself in this way, to counter the intentions of our immediately conscious self (and sometimes also to counter our health, our job prospects, career perspectives etc.). With this move, the playing field available to the individual, organisation or society to pitch for change alters and possibilities for lasting, long-term change come into view.
They acknowledge that it is really difficult to take that stance. Again in their own words: "one of the things that makes gaining this understanding so difficult is that we tend to be held captive by our own immune systems. We live i n s i d e them. We do not 'have them;' they 'have us.' We cannot see them because we are too caught up in them." They are usually operating from our unconscious.
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's book is about accompanying the reader (and their clients) in their quest to make this unconscious immune system visible, to view it from a respecful and curious distance, with appreciation, and thus gain the freedom to change for real – lastingly and with respect for all aspects and parts of oneself or one's organisation or society involved in the change.
Whether regarding New Year resolutions or in view of how we are continuing to run down our planet, seemingly unable to change our detrimental habits individually, organisationally or as a society: I find this book highly relevant as well as helpful and cannot recommend it enough to anyone interested in the how, why and why not of change.
I’m finding this interesting because I don’t set out to change (and reading this, change sounds really really strenuous), but I, or my behavior, *has* been steadily changing since 2020, when I read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire.
Each new book I read that was somehow related to what our agriculture does to our planet, and then later to us, led to me changing my priorities in buying food. Which I had not set out to do. So it felt effortless at the personal level.
The bit about the immune systems I also find interesting because I’ve also become more aware that I *am* my body, not I *have* a body.
I love this topic! I backed out of a sales career because the constant goals weighed too heavily, but something must have stuck because I love a New Years Resolution - and while I didn’t achieve them all last year, I can see where I failed.
Here are my tips:
1. Write them down. Obvious, but not everyone does. Mine are pinned on my notes app.
2. Review them often, and set them with this in mind. I totally agree with the section on reviewing above. One of mine was to read 24 books, so 2 a month is easy to monitor. Another, get a dog, wasn’t (and wasn’t very realistic either, but that’s another matter).
3. Make them attainable throughout the year. I assume everyone knows about SMART objectives, but this is more - if I ended Feb with only 3 books read, I can catch up. “Arrange a date night every month” can be failed by the 1st Feb.
4. Gamification helps, for me at least. I love maintaining a kindle streak or ticking off every lb lost.
I’m intrigued to know what methods have worked for other people