Tuesday Musings #09 | Fuck Resolutions

Only a few days into 2023 and you’re probably well aware that it’s resolution season. That means family are asking what you’re going to do differently, friends are curious how you’re going to be the best version of yourself, and promoted posts are suggesting you can completely change your life for good.

You can probably guess my opinion on all this (hint: it’s in the title).?

Why so negative, Jim Pascoe? Okay, okay, the truth is I feel like EVERY DAY is an opportunity to improve yourself. And I’m just early-recoiling from the looming February wasteland of lapsed gym memberships, the doom of cascading client dinners breaking my diet. Resolutions seem like fads. I'm not into that.?

What I am into is telling you that I’m starting this new year very optimistic about things. So instead of focusing on what’s wrong with resolutions, I’m going to give you an honest-to-goodness BIG SECRET to success.?

There are only three things to do:

1. Write down a description of the new you. It can be general (“I will become a better editor”) or it can be specific (“I will become a master of typography”). Don’t wordsmith it trying to get it perfect, and please DON’T share this with anyone. Yeah, yeah, accountability blah blah blah. Don’t turn your friends, let alone the borderline sociopathic social media crowd, into prison guards watching over your every move. No one needs that. If you want it, you’ll work toward it. If you don’t, maybe you don’t really want it badly enough.?

2. Write down WHY. Be honest, don’t be overly altruistic. Say it like you mean it. I’m doing it to be the best that’s ever lived. I’m doing it to make boatloads of money. I’m doing it because I’m a bad MF. This is a crucially important step, because a ship’s rudder doesn’t point to the destination, it cuts through the current on the way there.??

3. Check in every week and write down how you are succeeding, NOT how you are failing. Seriously. Make it a game to figure out how even off weeks can push you closer to your goal. Maybe you spent a week with family, away from the computer. Don’t write “I should have done this or that,” write “I made myself happier and a happier me pushes me closer to my goal.”?

Pick a day and a time and DO IT, every week. For me it’s Mondays at 9 am – it’s on my calendar so that I don’t blow it off and/or forget. It can be in a fancy notebook with my favorite Blackwing pencils, or it can be on a Google doc. It doesn’t matter.?

That’s the big secret. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where you write. It doesn’t matter WHAT you write. It actually doesn’t even matter what you DO. What matters is that you spend the time every week to focus on what you’re already doing and allow that focus to sculpt your future.

Someone said to me over the break: in therapy it’s not important what you say to a therapist, it’s only important that you have a commitment to that particular relationship of talking and being heard.?

Don’t make a resolution, make a weekly commitment to writing down how you are already succeeding.?

Let’s go.?

love,

jpp