Beyond Resolutions

Creating a Theme for Your Year


Oh, the new year.

If you're seeing more calendars, planners and new year’s resolutions, you're not alone. There is a big productivity industry driving all kinds of ideas your way.

Do more. Have more. Be more, And 20% off our new planner!

Planning can be fun and productivity has its place. But if you're feeling overwhelmed, I want to help. I have an alternative you might enjoy.

But first I should come clean.

A Love of Planning

Before I tell you about an alternative to planning (and a book I love), you should know something. For about ten years, I brought a planner with me everywhere.

Anyone who knew me in middle school or high school knew I loved my planner. I started simple but as the years went on I got more ambitious and the planners became more intricate. They started harmless but grew to days planned in 15-minute increments. With stickers.

Then the Palm Pilot came out and you would have thought I died and went to heaven.

In college that little stylus helped me go to a whole other level. I did yearly reviews, I had Outlook and color-coded time boxes. It was a hobby for me. I was crazy about it.

Normal people went to... the mall? I don't know. I went to office supply stores. Office Depot. Staples. Office Max. I loved them all because they had planner sections, leather bags and yearly calendars.

And then my life took a turn.

It was the summer before my senior year of college. I was living in Costa Rica and I had a wonderful host family. During the week I volunteered in the national children's hospital and in my downtime I... planned, of course. I'd been preparing for a life as a medical school student and a doctor. I'd taken the MCAT (the med school test), completed all my classes, shadowed doctors for hundreds of hours, gotten nursing and EMT certifications and volunteered... a lot. The planner was smokin' hot.

And I brought a book with me. I can't tell you where or how I found the book. But in my free time I would read it and I loved it.

It came to me at an important time and made a big influence. I loosened up, relaxed on the planning and explored new paths that led me to Peace Corps. And that changed my life forever.

The book was Goal Free Living.

A Theme for Your Year

Goal Free Living has many wonderful ideas in it and I want to share one with you today. It's called a Theme for the Year. To hear more of the wonderful ideas from the book, see my interview with the author here. Stephen is great.

The idea is simple.

Instead of new year's resolutions, choose a theme you'd like to focus on this year. It could be a word, an idea, a value, or a principle. It could be a direction you want to go, something you want to reflect on, or a feeling you want to embody during the year. I've been doing this for 12 years now and you can see my themes here.

You can keep your theme private or share it with others. I didn't share my themes for years.

You might consider putting your theme up somewhere for you to remember. Like on the fridge, in your office, or on your computer or phone background. You can use it in your passwords, put it on your planner, or carry a token with you that reminds you of your theme. It's all up to you.

Whatever you do, you dedicate yourself to exploring that theme all year and then you see where it takes you.

It seems pretty simple, and it is. But I've found it quite liberating and life-changing.

You might too.

A Little More

If you'd like more resources, you're in luck. I've made a few videos and worksheets to complement the book and my interview with the author. You can find them here.

I hope you enjoy them!

Have a great, new year!

 

The Fisherman

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.

As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.

The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”

The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”

“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.

“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.

The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”

The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I have a graduate degree in business. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”

The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”

The fisherman asks, “And after that?”

The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”

The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

 

From Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

Randy Pausch

Randy copy.png

Currently Randy's famous Last Lecture titled How to Really Achieve Your Childhood Dreams has over 18,000,000 views on YouTube and has inspired millions of people to rethink their lives. It's impossible not to tear up a little bit during the talk or walk away not feeling like he has personally called on us to step our game.

I loved his book the Last Lecture and I've lost count of how many times I've seen his videos. You can watch his video below and enjoy some of his quotes as well. I hope you enjoy them and take Randy's humble advice to really achieve your childhood dreams.

 

Great Quotes from Randy

It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

 

It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. Find your passion and follow it. And if there is anything that I have learned in life, you will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as the metric — and there will always be someone with more. Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. That passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.

 

Did you figure out the head fake? It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

Focus on other people, not on yourself.

 

Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.

 

(Advice to his daughter, on dating boys)  Ignore everything they say and just pay attention to what they do. Because if you do that, you're not going to make all the big mistakes.

 

Find the best in everybody.

 

If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, "tell the truth." If I got three more words, I'd add: "All the time."

 

Did you figure out the second head fake? This talk's not for you. It's for my kids.

 

Randy's Wonderful Last Lecture

 

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