Happy 2024!

Welcome to January 2024!

Thinking about resolutions or goals (or whatever stock-taking units you like to use), I feel hopeful, energized, and—well—wary. It’s easy to be cynical when you’ve planned a “new you” many times before. When my kids were small and homemaking tasks dominated my to-do list, I found help wresting order out of chaos at FlyLady.net. Haven’t checked in with her for years, but I always found FlyLady so relatable. She frequently talked about planning baby steps, building habits a little at a time, so we wouldn’t orchestrate a huge reform plan only to crash and burn. At resolution time I think about crashing and burning a lot.

But 2023 had a big aha moment for me, courtesy of Kara and Laura, my daughters and co-conspirators in productivity. We’ve been doing body doubling and frequent check-ins and lots of very focused cheerleading. We’ve also analyzed each other up the wazoo, and they helped me see that I have a talent for seeing details and even predicting the future! But of course I can’t take action on everything I see. No human could follow up on it all, but I was wasting energy on guilt and/or anxiety about the hundreds of things I know but can’t prevent, prepare for, or fix. I’ve been working to cut down on the guilt and anxiety part.

This relates to how I interact with my own to-do list and short-term goals. I could be doing ten of the hundred items on my list at once, but I’d still kick myself for “ignoring” the other ninety. This year, I resolve NOT to give in to cynicism by giving up on goal-making, I resolve to appreciate my big vision (it’s great that I know the next hundred things I want to do!). And I resolve to celebrate when I am doing the first ten things, or even—baby steps!—the first one.

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and (reasonably) productive 2024!