Fresh Look Ahead For The New Year
Call them resolutions, goals, or maybe just ideas for the year ahead.
The Teardown
Thursday :: January 4th, 2024
The end of the year is a time for reflection. It’s when most of us get a chance to see more of our families, to play with our kids (if they exist), and to spend time wrapping up various to-dos that shouldn’t spoil the start of the new year. Some examples to quell your imagination:
I need to hang shelves to store my daughter’s Lego sculptures
I need to claw back a refundable deposit from a brand that refuses to answer my calls
I have to renew my parking pass for the local train station.
The turn of the calendar is also when many folks craft their resolutions for the upcoming year. Some people are motivated enough to get through them all. Others barely scratch the surface and then claim all resolution-making is stupid. In a Wall Street Journal article from 2009, the problem was distilled down to doing too many things at once:
Given its limitations, New Year's resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. Human routines are stubborn things, which helps explain why 88% of all resolutions end in failure, according to a 2007 survey of over 3,000 people conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman. Bad habits are hard to break—and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once.
Tackling multiple lofty resolutions at once seems to squash the likelihood of tackling any of them. I haven’t back-tested this conclusion on resolutions from past years. But in general, this conclusion is true of my life in general. Aspirational multi-tasking is fastest way to accomplish nothing.
With that in mind, this post doesn’t cover my strict resolutions for the 2024. Instead, it’s a digest of ideas I’m thinking about for The Teardown, my professional life, kids, and friends. I sometimes describe myself as always dissatisfied. But perhaps another framing fit for this post is: always curious.
#1: Read More
In my post from late November about talking to strangers, I referenced the site willem.com. There were several links in Willem’s original post that sparked mine. One such link was for a book by Joe Keohan titled The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World. I was lucky enough to find both that book and James Clear’s Atomic Habits at the library and have both sitting on my desk.
I’d like to read both books during my evenings. Of course, it’s impossible to read them at the same time with any real depth. I’m starting first with The Power of Strangers and then moving to Atomic Habits. I also bought a copy of the latter in audiobook form.
Do you have any book suggestions? If so, send them back my way (or leave in comments) and I’ll crowd-source them for everyone in my next post.
#2: Write More
My desire is to write something every morning. Over the last few weeks, I’ve consumed my morning time with work-related items and holiday-season logistics. During that time, I’ve written parts of various drafts for this blog/newsletter but haven’t published anything.
So, translating that desire into a two-part goal:
Write every morning - even if for fifteen minutes.
Publish The Teardown every week- a full post, not The Writers Room.
#3: Add Character To My Office
I work from home. As it’s known in contemporary times, I’m a remote worker. Home work affords me tons of flexibility but requires lots of discipline. The structure I create around how and when to work helps me settle and be productive in just a few minutes.
I also have to be more deliberate with the mundane stuff. Do I need to take a shower every day? I suppose I don’t. Did I see the sun today? Well, I saw it from the window while I pounded letter after letter into HubSpot. These weren’t tasks I contemplated when I commuted to an office. I always showered, and I always saw the sun at some point during my walk to work, home from work, while grabbing lunch, or during some break.
That last word and the broader concept is key: breaks. On one hand, I’m at home and no one sees whether I’m working or not. On the other hand, it’s easy to power through an entire day - with small breaks - and never feel like I’m done. But what’s certain is that my office space remains static throughout the day.
That stasis is a stark difference compared to commute life. In that life, I might’ve walked to work using a different set of streets than normal. Or, I would occasionally run into a friend or former coworker and say hello. These welcome hiccups helped keep my days fresh. In remote work world, there are many fewer external hiccups. Much more of the change has to come from me.
So, I’m thinking about some changes to my home office. Here are some of my ideas:
Adding and moving some art on the walls to spark memories, or conversation when people see something on the wall courtesy of my webcam.
Modifying the layout of desks. My wife and I used to work in the same room full-time. These days, it’s just me. Perhaps it’s time to rejigger the layout.
Placing something else alive (ish) in the room. Flowers? Plants?
Setting up a guitar so I can quit my day job and be a rockstar. I’m recently trying to play guitar more than I have in the past. I’d like to be fluent enough to play songs for my kids and not struggle with the basics. Look for my cover band at your local watering hole in 2024.
#4: Plan Evening Meals
I’ve never attached to the concept of planning a week’s worth of meals. That resistance felt like a good thing. Too much structure would make things feel stale, brittle, and boring, right?
My more recent conclusion is easier on the brain. Plan the week’s dinners.
In the past, the initial approach to the plan was the hardest part. That said, it seems logical to focus on the week ahead once rather than strain every evening on the question of what to cook. I’ve polled my constituents and they agree as well. More time spent with them and less time spent discussing or agonizing over what to assemble on plates is time well spent.
#5: Restructure My Workouts
I’m in the gym most days during the week, usually starting between 5:30 and 5:45 am. The early slot is a blessing and a curse. Workouts help jumpstart my day, improve my mood, and bolster my health. But, I run out of steam earlier in the day and evening.
My routine covers four groups of muscles and exercises.
Legs: Often tackled with a barbell squat or some variation of it, hip thrusts, and single leg exercises.
Posterior Chain (i.e. back): The deadlift is a common posterior-chain exercise but far from the only thing to do. Another great exercise in this category —pull-ups.
Upper Body (Chest Focus): I use chest presses of various types and angles, push-ups, flys, and other tricep-oriented add-ons.
Upper Body (Shoulder Focus): Similar to chest exercises, but instead using movements like overhead presses, front/side raises, rear-flys.
The routine is effective but sometimes feels stale. But, it’s entirely mine to change.
During 2020-2021 COVID peaks, I paid for a subscription to Future. The service gave me access to a trainer that structured workouts and communicated via video, text, and calls. I would often film my exercises and send them to him for critique. The process resulted in lots of improvements in strength and also in accessory knowledge. I was introduced to stretches and less-intensive exercises around major lifts to improve mobility, flexibility, and warm-up or exhaust muscles.
Long story short: My four-day routine is alive and well but I’ve recently neglected some of the stuff around the edges. Mobility and flexibility work sometimes feel like a waste of time, but it isn’t. So, I’m working on a revised plan that better integrates the little things that go a long way toward improving the big lifts.
#6: Run Miles Each Week
A supplement to (4) is running. A run is one of the few activities that puts me in pure Zen or focus mode. I don’t get bored. And I don’t need music. A run is a time to think, or conversely, settle into a pace and avoid thinking all together.
I ran cross-country in high-school and have always maintained some level of running fitness. From March-October 2020, I was running twenty-five miles a week (or more). I was fit enough to run an informal half-marathon every other week within a timeframe that satisfied my competitive brain.
The end of 2021 disrupted that flow. I was working on an important project that required lots of collaboration with people in India. So, I spent many early mornings working through issues with them. I was also dealing with a new manager that added time pressure to the process. My project work continued into 2022, trailing off in May of that year.
Throughout those months, my running frequency and fitness went down the drain. And it is annoying to climb back up the hill after losing progress. You’re breathing harder, running slower, and tiring sooner. With enough patience, time, and practice, things improve - especially when you introduce variations such as track workouts, hill workouts, and etc.
My target is to ramp back to something like fifteen miles every week. That could be three five-mile runs, or some other combination. And, I have to conquer my pesky side-stitch issue. Side-stiches sometimes derailed runs in high school and continue to do so today.
What causes side-stitches isn’t understood in full. As a result, remedies are very much anecdotal: breath a certain way, slow down, press the spot, stretch, etc. What will work in one instance vs. another is never obvious. I’m no stranger to long walks home having abruptly stopped after a stitch destroys my breathing or mental focus or both.
#7: Build My Personal Finance App
This idea probably sounds silly. Sure, I could use one of the many budgeting and transaction tracking platforms to accomplish the goal. Or, I could rely on time-tested software that fits almost all needs - Excel.
But I find myself somewhat displeased with both options. Most of the major sites focus on transaction categorization. A spreadsheet cannot, without some other programming and plumbing, import and automatically categorize transactions. And, I’m not achieving the higher-level budget scenario flexibility I want with something like Mint (RIP) or YNAB.
In conclusion, I’m going to build my own app. It will take a while. But it will be fun learning experience. And ultimately, if I’m pleased enough, I’ll release it as a simple SaaS app in the spirit of Indie Hacker.
#8: Explore Ideas For Businesses
I’ve long tried or wanted to start a business. In grade school, I created a magazine. In college, I worked on a website and business plan for musical artist management company. I wrote code for a venue-booking and listing website.
Later, as an adult, I briefly tried to create a photography business. In 2016, I helped assemble a team to start an insurance MGA. The list goes on.
In very recent times, I’ve generated a few ideas that I want to push forward. The difference now is some extra motivation and a network of folks that will help quickly vet these ideas.
#9: Rediscover My Golf Game
I played lots of golf as a ten-ish aged kid. My parents sent me to golf camp in the summers, and I was fortunate to play nearby courses. Then, I was discouraged with sudden poor mechanics and gave up. I picked up clubs to play a course maybe twice during the next thirty years.
Through a local group of friends, I procured a used set of clubs that first collected lots of dust in my garage. Then, through enough coaxing, a friend from the same group included me in a Friday evening group of four at a local course.
In an instant, I remembered the joy and the frustration of the game. My first drive left the ground and traveled somewhere between one-hundred and two-hundred yards. It also hooked left, thought not into an unsuspecting backyard. Then, I had a subsequent shot from the rough. Fourteen holes later, the session ended with an adult beverage.
I remembered that I could in fact play golf. It was possible to feel my technique and resulting shot align.
As a more mature adult, I also realized that I didn’t need to be so serious about it. Do I want to practice and play as well as possible? Of course. But frustration with or from actual play doesn’t need to consume my mental focus like it once did. Also, a couple hours on a course (or more) is about the camaraderie. I’m not playing with pros. I’m playing with friends. I’ll just enjoy it instead.