This year I am stepping away from traditional New Year’s goals. I’m not going to lose ten pounds, I’m not going to become fluent in Italian and I am not going to go viral with the Human Constant. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind doing all of those things but I have had those “resolutions” before and I don’t typically hit the goal, or I forget about it by February and move on to something else.
How am I accomplishing my goals now?
When I look at the things I have accomplished, there is a common thread. Each one had the structure in place to succeed and the mindset to do it. For example, last year I wrote 45 pieces for the Human Constant. Prior to that I hadn’t written more than 5-10 articles in a single year.
So what changed?
The reality was that in the past, I didn’t have a clear path to accomplish the goals I set out to do. I would write an article haphazardly, feel great about it and then not do it again for weeks. There was nothing in place to keep the momentum going.
Setting Goals is a Starting Point
I knew if I wanted to truly achieve what I wanted to, I did need to have some goals in place. Mind you, this was last January and so I did put the traditional goals on paper. I wanted to have 100 subscribers, be hitting 100 page views per month, have 25 active users per month and collect $100 in donations.
I understand these goals are extremely small potatoes as far as web traffic goes but when you are starting from nothing, you need to set a goal that should be within reach, then re-calibrate from there. Remember, I was starting from a place where I was writing roughly 5 articles a year.
So yes, I have set traditional goals for myself, but the problem is that most people stop there. They set the goal and leave everything else to chance when it comes to how to achieve it.
Building Out a Structure
In order to accomplish my goals, I needed to have space in my calendar to do it. The first thing I needed to do was get a realistic timeframe for how long it would take to produce and article. This is usually about two hours for me.
Next I needed to see how long the post processing and promotion of the article on social media would take. Another two hours. So I needed to fit four hours somewhere into my already busy schedule if this was going to happen.
After I had the timeframe down, building out a workflow meant that I had a process that became like muscle memory in my brain for how to write, post process and promote. Not having to think about what comes next, makes the goal that much more achievable.
Finding Accountability Partners
By FAR the biggest thing I did last year to achieve my writing goals was to get an accountability partner. In my case, I have two in John and Keith, but as I built a list of subscribers, they also become accountability partners who have expectations for the site.
It was interesting to me that I in prior years, when I didn’t have an accountability partner, it was incredibly easy for me to disappoint myself and not think anything of it. Once I had a true accountability partner, it was much harder to do that and it pushed me to continue to write every weekend because I didn’t want to disappoint them.
This year, they will be my accountability partner as I build out a structure for a Podcast and short form video.
Bringing Mindset Into the Equation
This year, in 2026 I am adding a new dimension to my new year’s resolutions and that is to take into account mindset. 2025 was a very tough year and by the end of it, I seemed to be in a constant state of tiredness, anxiety, and stress. The more I feel these things, the more I crave those tiny moments of zen that I seek out throughout the day.
Maybe that is enjoying an espresso as I write. Maybe it’s taking a walk to the water that I didn’t see nearly enough of last year despite living within a mile of it. We have to remember that we do the things that we do in life in the hopes of getting to a point when we can do those things more often, but we don’t take advantage of them when they are right in front of us in the here and now.
Finding My Ikigai
My wife bought me a new book for Christmas and it’s called, “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. I ironically I have read some of Hector’s work on Japan before as he also wrote “A Geek in Japan,” but here he takes on the Japanese concept of Ikigai.
Ikigai is about finding your meaning for life and essentially it is a ven diagram where what you love, what you are good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs all overlap. According to the Japanese, everyone has their true meaning for living and once you find it, it is the key to achieving a long and happy life.
Spending too much time worrying about what the past was or what the future can be takes us out of the present and keeps us from achieving a flow state, that transcending feeling you get when you are completely immersed in what you are doing and time seems to stop and fly by all at once. I wrote about this in my article, “Is Nostalgia Killing Your Vibe?”
A Simple Mindset is Hardly Simple Minded
In order to figure out what my Ikigai is (I have some ideas) I need to simplify in order to find more opportunities to achieve those zen states that I am craving. I also need to re-evaluate some of my activities that are causing some of the stress.
Spending an hour on the couch after work and scrolling though social media worrying about what is going on in the world is certainly not going to bring me to the zen state I am looking for. When I catch myself doing that, I need to turn that into an opportunity for something different. Working on a painting or working on an Italian lesson is a much better use of the time that would have been earmarked to increase my cortisol levels.
Being plugged in all the time is certainly a problem. In the book, Garcia and Miralles talk about the fact that cave men were much less stressed than we are today. Outside of the occasional death by sabre toothed tiger, much of their time was spent in a much more leisurely manner than we are accustomed to.
Now the state of constant competition and connectedness we are in means that every notification on the cell phone can be a signal to your brain that danger is near and the body reacts to that putting yourself in an eternal state of stress.
Boring is Okay
When we clear out the distractions, our minds are not built to periods of time with nothing going on anymore so we tend to want to fill it with the next thing. I’m resisting the urge to do that, leaving time for me to observe more in the world around me and just be.
Most days that we get up are not going to be off the charts amazing. We are going to prep food, do the dishes, clean the house and other mundane tasks that make up the everyday. That doesn’t mean picking out the perfect produce at the grocery store can’t be an adventure worth investing in. Quite the opposite.
In these small moments of appreciation for the every day, we can put a coin in the bank towards being more mindful, more present, and in turn giving our body the recovery it needs so that we can go out and obtain those true moments of greatness.
This is what I hope to achieve in 2026. I hope you will join me.
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