For many years, and towards the end of December, I’d often sit down writing everything I’d like to start or continue doing for the next year. I’d write everything in extreme detail; every goal, every habit, every lifestyle change, and sort of build a picture of how I’d like to live my days moving into the new year.
Almost every time, and as life happens, I’d keep track of the goals but not the steps. So oftentimes I would take a different route and lose track. Which I eventually learned is absolutely wrong, from a “resolutions” perspective.
I now think it’s far more better if we prioritize thinking in terms of steps over goals, because usually on the right path we discover that we want different goals. My new years resolutions for 2021 are sure not the same for 2023, and my new years resolutions for 2022 are sure not the same for 2024. But that’s not to say that they changed because I already did everything I want, quite the contrary, they changed because back then I didn’t quite knew what I want.
So a good question would be “How to make sure that what I want right this moment IS the thing that I truly want, and would probably keep wanting till the end of the year?” – Answer: You can’t. You can’t know whether your goals would change by change of other circumstances or not (socioeconomic, financial, psychological, physical, internal, external, etc)
That’s why I believe the best thing to do at the start of every year is focus on the steps; the iterations I need to go from my current state to a better one; what does that involve?
Thinking in terms of iterations puts emphasis on the daily work.
So a better approach would be replacing the question:
What would you like to achieve throughout the new year?
by the question:
How would you like your day throughout the new year to look like?
I found this proved to be a far superior approach. Because, for me, at any point, everything I want is front & clear everywhere that I don’t want to state out loud -even to myself- that I want it. BUT these same things I want are constantly changing, and I think that’s fine.
I spent a big deal of 2023 like a mad scientist, trying to have systems in place to measure the tinniest fraction of everything happening in my life, quantitatively & qualitatively. So it’s quite unlikely for me to lose sense of something big that I want, but now the challenge becomes:
- Have control over the daily iterations – steps that lead to things
- Make sure my high-level wants are actually the things I want
That’s why I think it doesn’t matter if you write all your new years’ resolutions because the rate of change of aspirations for lots of us became so fast that we sometimes get demotivated because we don’t like to start from scratch or change courses, but it’s the normal thing to do; in fact it’s quite healthy also.
Also that’s why I think lots of this planning should be better allocated towards the day and not the year, which can help in many ways.
Another perk of constantly looking into how you’d like to spend your day is that it provides you a chance to enjoy being present. High-level goals, monthly or quarterly, overlook the smaller wins, and even sometimes don’t make them look like wins; they often prioritize moving faster over moving more efficiently. But lower-level goals (i.e smaller steps) enable us to integrate & enjoy small wins that often in many ways help the bigger goals anyway!
The most important small win of any day in my opinion, is being present. Planning is cool but constant planning for the future will only make sure that you’re constantly living in the future which we don’t want. We want to plan for the future but also enjoy what we’re having, which micro-planning could help with really well.