On new year resolutions

I am not a big fan of calendar years.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the celebration, the time spent with friends, the good meals and good wines.

I take no issue with using the calendar to measure the passage of time.

I firmly believe it is a terrible length for planning the future. Instead, it is better suited to review and report the past.

To think about the future, I instead use a longer timeframe, 10 years, and shorter ones, six to eight weeks.

The former is essential because nothing important happens overnight. The latter because rapid iteration, compounding learning, and constant course correction are the only way to transform 10-year plans into reality.

This leads to my take on new year resolutions: I don’t think they are effective.

If you want to do something, start immediately, don’t delay to next year’s beginning. Anything you can postpone to a later start probably isn’t that important.

The only exception is today. So if you want to start doing something that occurs to you on January 1st, by all means, begin immediately.

Remember though, it wasn’t a New Year Resolution, but an important project that couldn’t wait for tomorrow.

Happy New Year!