Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been using lists to essentially run my life. My brain, which is most likely fueled by undiagnosed ADHD, is fast and jumps from one idea to the next in rapid-fire mode twenty-four-seven. To capture some of the ideas and complete them, I need some kind of to-do list to make this happen and I find great, immeasurable joy from ticking things off of these lists so the great New Year, New Me, Goal List is something that I actually look forward to every year. The problem is that I’m also very hard on myself and my goals can be slightly unattainable (very unattainable). Then, like most of us, I feel like I didn’t do enough, just need to try harder and the goals roll over into the next year and so does my coffee addiction. And so on, until the world ends.

This year, I’m enlisting the help of experts to do things a little differently. I have things I want to accomplish, mostly in the health and writing sphere, but instead of doing it the old way that just never works, I’m going to do it a new way that will work and get the results I bloody want. Since I have a five-year-old and absolutely no time, I downloaded the Headway App–an app that summarizes books and gives you the key takeaways–and have been listening for fifteen minutes per day while I tidy up the house or shower or whatever. Two of the books that I really liked a lot were a book called Chop Wood Carry Water and The One Thing. Basically, the books are about how we achieve the most success when we really focus on one thing and we do it over and over again in small steps. So here’s how I’m going to use these concepts for my NYR. The first step is that I’m going to call these things “daily practices” instead of goals because maybe it will trick my brain into being less anxious about it all.

My resolution before would have looked like this:

• Finish V Book & Find New Publisher
• Finish K Romance Book
• Get Hot Bod & Make Healthier Choices
• Mental Health
• Become The Best Mom Ever (ha! It’s laughable!)
• Travel With Friends
• Save $10,000
• Make The World A Better Place
• Gain 10,000 followers on TT

You can see how I might have just written “solve for world peace and then go to tea with the gods of old.” Like, these are big things when you consider that I’m a busy af working mom. This list is a great starting point because at least I’m identifying things that matter to me and things I want to change. But it’s all BIG and feels impossible and overwhelming and isn’t super actionable and I’m going to be BIG SAD when I can’t do it all. Here’s what my new list looks like using the Chop Wood/One Thing approach:

• Make a choice about who will edit V book and add one potential publisher to a list every week.
• Write words every day for K Romance Book
• Move My Body For Twenty Minutes Per Day & Take Vitamins Every Morning
• Each Morning, Spend Five Minutes Doing Brain Journals
• Listen To Parenting Summaries On Headway When Walking Dog
• Plan One Trip With Friends in 2024
• Save $$$ per check in a High Yield Savings Account
• Targeted Marketing Power to Two Campaigns
• Make One TT Video Per Day

Now I can take it a step further by using the One Thing approach and literally focusing on just the ONE most important thing I want to master in 2024, leaving everything else to chance. In my case, it would be writing and health. And then my list would look like this:

• Write Every Day
• Move Body Every Day
• Create One Piece Of Content Every Day

The idea of all of this is that chipping away at things piece by piece in one small way every day creates long-term habits. And mentally it’s a lot less overwhelming to “write every day” than it is to “finish a five-hundred-word novel.” And being highly focused on one thing helps us to master it.

So I’m going to try these daily practices and see what happens. And look, I know that some people are like “throw out goal lists” but I need things to look forward to for like, the will to live, so…

AND even though it’s not in line with my current daily practices, I really wanted a planner that is repeatedly goal-focused for this practice, and because I couldn’t find out and again, ADHD probably, I designed a whole goal planner and put it on Amazon so I could order it. Overachiever? Yes. But in a weird non-productive way. It’s giant and I feel like an old-timey record keeper but it’s working so far and I like it. Plus it’s pretty.

Wanna try this new practice with me? Have you ever tried anything like this? What’s your approach? What’s your New Year’s Resolution and why?