Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Life Kit producer Clare Marie Schneider, who interviewed productivity expert Oliver Burkeman exclusively for this newsletter.
It's the first week of January. Have you already sworn to floss twice a day? Exercise three times a week? Finally finish writing that novel?
Before you get too ahead of yourself on a New Year's resolution, Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, has some advice: “Be careful [not to] reinforce this notion that each year there's a whole set of extra new habits that you've got to add” to your to-do list.
It can create unrealistic expectations for self-improvement, he adds. “They carry this message that I am going to be a completely different person tomorrow.”
Instead, Burkeman says to go easy on yourself and think of New Year’s resolutions as a way to enhance the life you’re already living.
Burkeman explains how to reframe your goals for 2024 and make them more attainable.
⏰ Make time for a new goal by narrowing your focus. “Every decision to spend an hour of your life on something is a decision to not spend it on other things,” says Burkeman. So if you made a New Year’s resolution to work out three times a week, that might mean letting other tasks or habits fall by the wayside, like watching TV or gardening.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, he adds. “There's something powerful about being willing to choose and say: this is the year of one thing, and that means it's not the year of these other things.”
🚧 Account for life’s little roadblocks. To make your New Year’s resolution sustainable, Burkeman says to do it “daily-ish.” That way, you won’t feel like you failed if you only meditate or journal four times a week rather than seven. This approach accounts for life’s roadblocks and hurdles — some days you’ll be too tired or won’t have time, and that’s OK.
📅 You don’t have to stick to a resolution for the whole year. Setting out to do something for a year can be daunting, says Burkeman. “Who says it has to be for a year?” Instead, try and set a more manageable timeline for your goal. If you want to read more this year, create a reading goal just for the month of January.
“To make regular change for a month is far more powerful than to claim you're going to make it for a year and then get nowhere with it,” he says.
✨ Keep yourself wanting more. Let’s say you want to get into the habit of writing in 2024. Try to write for only five minutes a day, says Burkeman. “Going absurdly small, to the point where it makes no sense to be intimidated by a goal, has some benefit.”
It can help turn a habit into “something you want [to do] instead of something you’re trying to avoid,” he adds.
Be sure to stop writing at the end of the allotted time frame. That’s because even if you feel energized and want to write for an hour, “you exhaust yourself and turn it into this huge thing that you then shy away from,” he says.
✏️ Try and try again. Habits can take a long time to form, and you will likely falter on your big plans to stick to your New Year’s resolution.
To buoy yourself from failure when building new habits, Burkeman says to cultivate a sense of resilience. “The real skill you’re learning is the skill of coming back after a setback.” So if you’ve lapsed on practicing that ukelele you got for Christmas, don’t let it stop you from playing altogether. Pick that instrument back up and try again.
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Tell us your New Year’s resolutions
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