Yearly Themes and Habits

Since 2018, the hosts of the Cortex podcast, Myke Hurley and CGP Grey, have eschewed New Year's resolutions and instead used the concepts of yearly themes. They've done a yearly theme episode every year since: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and just released last week, 2024.

Resolutions are too restrictive, and for most people the motivation from them quickly fades. In my opinion, you should grow over the course of a year, and resolutions don't account for this. You can think of resolutions as specific destinations, while themes are broader areas. If your resolution is to lose 15 pounds and run a 5k, but you instead get into lifting, gain some muscle, and take your squat from non-existent to your own bodyweight, you've failed your resolution. You didn't reach the destination you set up. But if your theme is "the year of athletics", you crushed it. Themes allow you to adapt as you go, while still giving you general direction.

A primary function of themes is to help you think about your thinking. There are lots of other tools for this, including books. One in particular that I've been thinking about is Atomic Habits. I recently re-read it, and realized I need to build some habits. You can read more about that here.

In the few weeks since I wrote that, I've come to value one of the tools more: the two-minute rule. The basic idea is that the most important thing when starting a habit is consistency. And the most reliable way to be consistent, at least at the start, is to make it easy. The two-minute rule says that whatever action you take toward that action each day should be doable in two minutes or less.

For me, even more important than making it easy, this also keeps the stakes low. Now that I'm aware of my perfectionist tendencies, I'm recognizing the importance of this. If I have to choose something that's doable in two minutes (not that you can't do more if you feel like it), I can't mentally turn it into something with high stakes. And since I can't turn it into something where my success or "failure" matters that much, that keeps me from avoiding it out of fear of said failure.

With that in mind, I've made my theme for 2024: The year of moving forward. It's not the year of hitting specific targets, and it's not the year of moving forward as much as possible. I'm keeping the stakes low. The more accurate title could even be "the year of not moving backward", but that's less catchy.

I have several areas (physical, mental, social, etc.), sub-areas (lifts, cardio, mobility), and specific metrics (squat, mile time, splits progress) that I'll be tracking, and the goal isn't to crush any individual metric, but to get them all moving in the right direction, or at least holding steady while others move up. In that regard, I'll be taking some of Jujimufu's advice in his article: Periodize Your Life.

I doubt I'll optimize the use of a yearly theme in 2024, but that's okay, I don't need to. I just want to progress, to move forward.