New Year's Resolutions: Why I'm Not Cool

I have distinct memories of writing down my New Year’s Resolutions throughout my teen years when I kept a journal—a tome of 700+ pages of spiral-bound, college rule notebooks that thankfully my dad pitched out when he and my mom sold the house where I grew up.?I can recall, or at least imagine, what some of those resolutions may have been:

I’m going to be a better person.?[Note: not sure what I meant and not sure it happened.]

I’m going to ask ______ to go out with me.?[Note: different girl every year, and it never happened.]

I’m going to stop messing with my zits.?[Note: it happened but only when I stopped getting zits.]

I’m going to be cooler.?[Note: never happened.]

When young, we tend to think that anything is possible for the sheer fact of, well, thinking it is possible.?When young, we believe in the alchemy of saying the resolution aloud or writing it down—those acts will transform our resolutions into reality.?But, as the true realities of adulthood set in, daily distractions and unforeseen complications, we stop believing in magic and realize that while anything might be possible, it almost certainly isn't going to be easy. ?Perhaps then, as these distractions and complications of adulthood begin to compound, we find ourselves thinking, “Wow, I feel like I’m treading water…am I ever going to move forward?”

Re-enter the New Year’s resolution of adulthood.?It’s laden with artifice, the timing is forced and no longer do we believe the resolution will happen magically.?But the New Year’s resolution at least serves as an excuse to try to move forward.?Unfortunately, a quick Google search on the topic will yield an endless number of articles confirming that most of our resolutions fail.?Many more sites will provide reasons why they fail, and chief among them:

• The resolution is unrealistic;
• Progress cannot be measured;
• There is no mechanism for accountability; and
• The resolution is too broad (not focused).

In the adult world of “might be possible” and with the many complications and distractions of “real life,” how then can we ever stick to a resolution??In a phrase: embrace the grind.?

When I say “the grind,” I’m thinking of a work of art by industrial designer and artist, Joey Roth.?While he’s most notable for his highly aesthetic and functional household items, I view Roth also as a philosopher by way of graphic design.?One of his works, “Grind-Dream,”(1) comes to mind, and about the design Roth says

I’m not talking about the daily grind: doing work you don’t like or don’t care about.?By grind I mean a combination of work ethic and improvised strategy that becomes a daily ritual and ensures progression or improvement over time, regardless of an individual day or even week’s outcome.(2a)

Step over step, Roth’s grind-line draws the viewer’s eye to the pinnacle, to the goal achieved.?By contrast, the dream-line is a smooth slope that at first glance seems an easy climb, but the truth is that one could never scale it.?Roth continues, “Dreaming about reaching the same goal is easier and faster in the beginning, but doesn’t provide the same framework.?The more a dream is exposed to reality, the more it needs this framework—grind.”(2b)?

I think what Roth is suggesting is that real life often adds friction when working towards dreams and goals, or as he eloquently puts it, our dreams become “exposed to reality.”?He then aptly suggests that our dreams—our resolutions—need a framework in order to reach their peak.?What Roth is illustrating with the grind are foundational tenets of psychology, teaching and management: chunking and agile project management.?We can use the structure these strategies provide to achieve our goals.

Chunking is just what it sounds like: breaking something big into smaller, digestible parts.?The American Psychological Association’s Dictionary defines chunking as “the process by which the mind divides large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory.”(3) Chunking is also a common method used by effective teachers who, rather than trying to teach to an ultimate, far-off level of mastery, instead teach smaller, iterative components of the whole that build into a complete level of understanding.

In terms of resolutions—actually getting the thing done—what’s important about the bridge from chunking to its application in education is that the process is iterative.?Within an iterative process, it’s possible to achieve many smaller goals along the way to the larger goal: one step at a time.?Such a process can provide incremental points of satisfaction and accomplishment that can be motivating to the ends of completing the larger task.?

But what about those reliable, old spoilers: unforeseen complications and daily distractions??Here’s where agile project management comes in.?Agile project management is an alternative to traditional, more linear project management.?This traditional linear model relies heavily on the planning phase and the anticipation of problems (i.e. complications); by contrast, agile management breaks down the larger goal into smaller, more manageable projects with shorter timelines(4)—like chunking.?Importantly, agile management has a built-in tolerance for issues and problems, i.e., for reality, and allows for dynamic real-time adjustments.?Though the smaller projects all build towards the whole, if one project hits a roadblock, the others can continue unimpeded while the troubled project managers are freer to design workarounds without detracting from progress towards the ultimate goal.?

Roth’s phrase for agile project management is “improvised strategy”—it sounds like an oxymoron at first, but it’s a wonderful concept: a plan that is designed to make progress without following a script.?Applying Roth’s device of “the grind” and the principles of chunking and agile management, let’s consider a hypothetical resolution such as “create a financial plan.”

At the fullest definition, financial planning should be an interdisciplinary exercise that calls upon your legal, tax and wealth advisors to coordinate their services—already this seems like a resolution that may fail due both to its breadth and perhaps unrealistically ambitious goals.?In this case, engage in a little agile project management to start: select an advisor who has the bandwidth and generalist expertise to coordinate the project and work with the other advisors.?Then provide the lead advisor with a list of your priorities: savings goals, retirement planning, estate, legacy and charitable planning, among others.?In doing so, you’ve “chunked” your goal into more manageable components that will position each specialist advisor to work on his or her own respective parts of the larger plan.?Each advisor’s contribution can also be “chunked” into smaller sub-projects that will give you measurable accomplishments along the way, for example: cash-flow analysis, account consolidations, investment planning and asset allocation, income tax forecasting, estate tax forecasting, healthcare directives, powers of attorney, wills, trusts and so on.?Think of each component as its own project—as a step towards the top of the larger goal.?As for accountability, ideally, the lead advisor will keep you accountable for the information and direction you must provide, and each specialist advisor can be accountable to the lead advisor and/or to you, as well.?

Of course, creating a financial plan may not be the most exciting or popular of New Year’s resolutions.?Maybe yours is “exercise more,” “spend more time with family,” or “travel more.”?While none of these is terribly unrealistic, I’d argue that each could be more focused in order to be more measurable along the way.?Maybe then you can work with family and friends on being accountable to those more specific goals once you articulate them.?No matter your personal goal or resolution, construct a framework that breaks the goal into numerous small steps, or as Roth says, “a daily ritual that ensures progression.”

As for my resolution??Well, I don’t believe in that alchemy of youth anymore, and I do practice what I preach in terms of chunking and agile management.?That said, when I think of my younger self, admittedly at times I wish that I had maintained an “anything is possible” attitude as opposed to my current “might be possible” view.?The truth is, most of us think our goals need to be scaled down and that dreams are these enormous, amorphous, fantastical ideas—in fact, calling something a dream at the outset almost seems to doom it.?But look again at Roth’s “Grind-Dream:” the grind and the dream both get to the same place.?In seeing this, it occurs to me that my youthful “anything is possible” represents the dream, and my adult “might be possible” represents the grind.?Maybe then the key to realizing our dreams is to believe in the “anything” while working for the “might.”?Who knows, if I’d managed that balance as a kid, maybe I’d be cooler today.

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1.???????Image used by permission from Joey Roth.?Visit https://www.joeyroth.com/ for additional works by Joey Roth and to purchase PDFs.?To purchase framed prints, visit https://www.levelframes.com/artists/joey-roth.?Roth’s latest work uses blockchain as a fundamental material; visit https://vectorfield.art.?For his coffee cold-brewer visit https://drinkosma.com/.?Support working artists!

2.???????Roth, Joey.?https://www.levelframes.com/prints/grind-dream

3.???????American Psychological Association.?“APA Dictionary of Psychology.”?https://dictionary.apa.org/chunking

4.???????Kashyap, Sandeep.?“Traditional vs Agile Project Management Method: Which One is Right for Your Project?”?https://www.proofhub/articles/traditional-vs-agile-project-management