Happy New Year! & Ideas for 2024

Wooot! Happy New Year! I’m definitely in a reflective space, looking back at everything that happened in 2023. I feel like the year flew by for me—so much happened, but I can’t even remember half of it!

I feel like I am in a similar spot where I did not necessarily have super concrete goals last year for the upcoming year. I have definitely been thinking about overall buckets for my intentions: 

1. Career/work goals 

2. Home organization (digital and physical) - cleaning out things

3. Personal Writing

4. Social, family, friends

5. Language learning, 

6. Training & cycling

7. Traveling, new experiences

I like all of these, and I definitely have a lot of room to improve them. I’ve been on a kick recently to create specific, actionable systems—not goals or major projects. 

Let’s break down some examples of better systems for each of these as examples:

1. Career/Work - make a vision board for all the moving pieces of the product and create a short list of all the backlogged tasks to work on as well as current upcoming features

2. Home organization - go through all clothes and rank on a scale of 1-10, with the exception that you can’t rate something as a 7, because seven is too neutral. (the Mel Brooks way). Go through everything then donate or toss clothes that don’t work for you.

3. Personal writing - Write 15 minutes every day.  This one is largely due to me wanting to write more, and more consistently. I’ve added this to my Todoist to pop up every day and to be as easy as possible to check off - time based actions. I set the timer, and done. 

4. Social time - set up 2-3+ social events or phone calls every week. 

5. Language learning - spend 5 minutes a day on Duolingo or Quizlet to review my flashcards

6. Training and Cycling - I bought a training plan/personal coaching, so I’ve been following my plan every day. It’s awesome and I highly recommend it for any athletes looking to break free from a slump to get one, even if you’re self coaching with just the plan. It’s just so nice seeing all your workouts ahead and how it helps you plan your week. 

7. Traveling & new experiences - explore Travel Reddit or YouTube with my partner to get inspired, and come up with 5 places to vacation this year.

I think small ideas or goals are the way to go, and anything to build little habits is ideal. For example, I’m using this time right now to actually write my 15 minutes, and I’m simultaneously coming up with new ideas for what I want to do this year and even new ideas for my next article or writing piece! It really just forces you to produce something, even if it’s nothing you’d actually publish. Just creating something tangible is key, or completing something tangible. (For example, reading 10 pages a day; consumption of knowledge)