New Year's resolutions are silly, but not for the reason you think.
A 2-part framework for thinking about goals, systems, and big-picture vision.
The typical argument against New Year’s resolutions goes like this:
After an initial rush of enthusiasm, motivation fades.
It’s why the gyms empty out by February, and it’s why I stopped making resolutions like “publish 3 books this year.”
But there is something to be said for the fresh start effect, and indeed Research™ has confirmed that “Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior.” In layman’s terms, the end-beginning of the calendar year is a natural time to pause and take stock. Plus, all of the delicious treats consumed during the holidays (and deposited around the waist) give us an energy boost.
But annual resolutions, conceived as goals to achieve within a one-year horizon, may be the very worst possible framework for personal transformation. A year is an awkward timeline: too distant to demand immediate action, yet not long enough to allow for the organic development of meaningful change.
The better argument against December 31 resolutions is that the date is arbitrary. If you need to make a change, why wait? We should be constantly updating our resolutions, as well as our strategy for making them happen. Two weeks into the New Year is just as good a time to take stock as January 1 if you can invest it with the same symbolic meaning.
I don’t remember much of what James Clear wrote in Atomic Habits (did I actually read it?), but one phrase stuck with me from the cliff notes version:
Systems > goals.
If you google this, Clear’s name shows up at the top of the search results, but I’m pretty sure he stole it from Scott Adams, who likely borrowed it from someone else. Ideas this useful tend to have many parents. I have no shame in stealing it again to present my meta-system for setting goals, as well as goals for systems that get you closer to your goals – assuming you knew what goals would make you most satisfied.
A Two-Fold System for Transformation
The basic system is a two-fold writing exercise.
The first exercise, performed quarterly with a longer annual reflection, involves writing down your vision of a flourishing life. You give yourself permission to write down a future beyond your wildest dreams. The point isn’t to be realistic or set “SMART” goals specific, measurable, achievable... you know the corporate acronym), but to suspend logic and reason in favor of the most beautiful picture you can imagine.
The second exercise, performed daily, is more practical: write down the 2 or 3 most important things you will do that day. These will be a mix of necessity (what you must do to keep your job and daily bread) and possibility – an incremental step in the direction of that life you envisioned above. Nothing more.
To-do lists aren't goals – they're instructions to yourself about where to focus your attention. These tasks should be realistic and attainable. But there's a danger in over-engineering the path from your to-do list to your dream life. Every day brings new information. Not only will your sense of the best path change, the vision itself will change.
It's been said that you overestimate what you can do in one year, but underestimate what you can do in 5.
That has been true in my experience.
About 10 years ago, I got the idea to get my captain's license and start some kind of sailing business on San Francisco Bay. My old notebooks circa 2015 show a primitive vision of a sailing water taxi that would transport people across the Bay “with flair” (whatever that meant). At the time, I was basically homeless – what the Berkeley Marina euphemistically called a 'sneak-aboard' – living on a 24’ sloop and feeling increasingly hopeless about my dependence on marijuana, which I used to fuel pipedreams like the sailing taxi.
In early 2016, I took my first concrete step: signing up for SMART Captains – a 2-week crash course in chart-plotting and outsmarting the Coast Guard's written test. I had little knowledge of what becoming a captain actually required. All I knew was that captains had to pass a drug test, so it seemed like a good way to tie my hands and motivate sobriety. During the course, I learned I'd need to rack up 360 days of sea time before they'd even ask for the drug test.
Over the next 5 years, I self-logged most of the required time on my own small sailboats before passing the Coast Guard’s written test (and the pee test). In those intervening years, something unexpected happened: startups like Boatsetter and GetMyBoat had taken Airbnb's sharing concept to the water, creating peer-to-peer platforms for booking cruises. They hit their stride right as I got my license in May 2020, when Bay Area residents were desperate for masked-optional outdoor activities.
From 2020 to 2024, I ran a sailing business that exceeded my wildest aspirations. I got paid well to do something vigorous and enjoyable that otherwise would have been an expensive hobby. The highlight was a 6-hour 'experience' through Airbnb – taking small groups to Angel Island for guided hikes to the summit of Mt. Livermore.
Somewhere around the 22nd circuit of the island in three years, I started experiencing a certain restlessness. My mind wandered to an even older vision from those same notebooks: getting back to the land. Though I'd never lived rurally, homesteading offered an even greater call to adventure than sailing – one I could pursue with my growing family.
The timing, again, was serendipitous. SpaceX's Starlink satellites and the post-pandemic Zoom economy had made remote work not just possible but normal. Within weeks of the words 'back to the land' re-entering my journals, an opportunity appeared to rent our current homestead abode in Butte County. I haven't sailed in over a year, but I have zero regrets about trading a rudder for rural life.
This isn't a story about achieving goals – it's about how systems and visions evolve. The sailing business wasn't in my original water taxi vision, and Butte County wasn't in my original homesteading dreams. But maintaining a daily practice of both practical action and wild dreaming positioned me to recognize opportunities when they appeared.
My latest journal is filled with vision-casting notes that animate me through daily chores and demands of work and family life. Many of these aspirations are as audacious as my old marijuana-fueled pipe dreams. But they're beautiful, and I've seen enough times that when I take steps toward my dreams, God and circumstance have met me more than halfway.
I'll spare you my litany of grandiose hopes for the future, but I will share the systems I'm implementing in 2025 to increase the odds and accelerate the timeline toward them.
1. Caffeine On Ramp
First is the caffeine on-ramp: sipping white tea during morning prayer while I journal the two tiers:
1. Has my vision changed?
2. What 2-3 things will I focus on today?
Lots of people are waking up to the fact that the body adapts to caffeine intake - especially if you have it first thing. The result is that you become reliant on it, and don’t get the full benefit as if you wait 90 minutes. I’ve found a middle ground with low-caffeine white tea. The coffee still hits at 9 AM, when I’m hitting my stride and getting into the Deep Work portion of my day.
2. Time Blocking
Next is broad-based time blocking – not planning every minute, but setting certain appointments with myself before opening my calendar to others. Mondays stay meeting-free for deep work and moving big rocks, giving me momentum for the rest of the week. Other mornings are reserved for the 1 or 2 things I've identified as top priorities.
Evenings are blocked for family time, nights for reading books (not scrolling).
Exercise follows a different kind of flexible time blocking, modeled after the ancient Greek Tetrad cycle. Monday late morning gets me outside for a quick, energizing plyometric workout, preparing for the next day's strenuous afternoon ruck (weighted hike), strength routine, or outdoor 'maintenance' work cutting trees and building burn piles. Wednesday through Saturday have time blocked for mobility work, technique, and other outdoor work, but these stay flexible enough for hikes or play with the kids.
My dietary routine aims to balance nutrition, energy, and enjoyment – in that order – focusing on 'crowding out' guilty pleasures with meals so nourishing and delicious that I'm not tempted to snack or binge. Most nights, I will allow myself a half cup of ice cream (note: raw milk, cream, eggs & honey – a veritable superfood in moderation) and save my willpower for resisting the energy-killing sludge (i.e., seed oils, high-fructose corn syrup, etc.) that characterizes much of the American food supply.
3. PM Alarm Clock
Rather than setting a wake-up alarm, I have a nighttime be-in-bed time. It's tempting to squeeze in more work or scrolling after the kids are asleep, but this always comes at the expense of the next day's productivity. Nothing is so pressing that it can't become one of tomorrow morning's top priorities.
Perhaps I'm straining to distinguish these 'systems' from run-of-the-mill resolutions, but the distinction feels crucial – like the difference between plotting a cross-country road trip by specific highways versus simply heading west with a good map and a full tank of gas.
There’s a book that's been haunting my social meda feed lately, with the intriguing title 'Why Greatness Can't Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective.' I haven’t read it, but the title alone feels like a permission slip to release ourselves from the tyranny of annual goal-setting. After all, we don't always know what to want – or perhaps more accurately, we don't always want what we should want.
What we can do, however, is orient ourselves toward the good. Rather than marking progress in year-long chunks, I've found wisdom in working in two-week sprints – short enough to demand immediate action, long enough to see if something's working. For the really important things, a small daily step is enough to keep the flame alive.
When we arrange our lives this way, we create space for serendipity. Someone famous once said, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
But that's not quite right. It’s less about hard work than obsessive drive over a long period of time. Showing up day after day with openness to possibility. Robert Frost might have been closer with 'fortune favors the bold,' though I'd adjust it to 'fortune favors the faithful' – faithful not just to the goal, but to the practice.
This feels especially relevant in 2025, as artificial intelligence creates new possibilities and perils. Yet even as our technological capabilities expand, the fundamental rhythms of human flourishing remain unchanged: we still need daily bread, daily purpose, and daily grace. The most meaningful transformations in our lives tend to operate on God's timeline, not our own. Our job isn't to force the timeline but to show up every day, ready to receive what comes.