William Viana

New Year’s Resolutions

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  • The Case for New Year’s Resolutions: Living with Intention and Purpose

    I love planning. I don’t particularly like following plans, but the act of writing down a plan gives me a lot of pleasure. Be it vacation planning, roadmap planning, or mundane things like how I’ll spend my time on a 10-hour flight. I think I’ve read somewhere that planning an event makes it more enjoyable because of the anticipation, but I don’t need to cite research studies to know from experience that this is true.

    New Year’s resolutions, in particular, give me a sense of control over the direction I want to take and how I want to live my life. I know, I know—you don’t need to tie your goal settings to social constructs like the calendar year—if it’s worth doing, start now and don’t wait to time it to January 1st. However, I find this time of the year perfect for this activity. Most of the world slows down, and this slower pace is where I naturally find myself thinking about the struggles, the joyful moments, and the feeling of gratitude for all the things I sometimes take for granted. And that’s the perfect segue to ask myself, “Where do I go from here?”

    At the beginning of 2024, a friend shared his Notion template for goal setting that resonated with me deeply. It resonated because it was simple and yet powerful. It focuses on personal growth, habit creation, and helping structure your year to live your life rooted in intentionality. In short, this is how it goes:

    After a year of using it, I decided to track its origin, mainly to illustrate this post. It comes from the American entrepreneur Jesse Itzler, and this is how he explains it in more detail:

    You do these 3 things and your year will be DIFFERENT

    1. Kevin’s Rule: Put a mini adventure on the calendar every 8 weeks. Just something you would have normally not done like going camping instead of staying home and watching football one weekend. If you do that you’ll have 6 experiences you wouldn’t otherwise have at the end of 2024.

    2. Add a new winning habit every QUARTER! Instead of putting pressure on yourself to become a new person Jan 1st.

    3. Choose a Misogi: Put something BIG on your calendar. Something that pushes your limits in 2024. It could be a physical challenge (a race or climbing a mountain), writing a book, getting xx license, quitting smoking etc. when choosing it ask yourself “How do I want to define my year?”

    The key is to commit to these. Write them down, tell your friends PUT THEM ON THE CALENDAR.

    Then follow the script.

    Jesse Itzler

    The only thing I don’t agree with is telling your friends, as research shows that announcing your goals publicly makes you less likely to achieve them.