New Year’s Resolutions

Ali Abdaal -

Hey friends,

You’ve probably heard about how most people don’t end up sticking to their New Year’s Resolutions. They buy gym memberships in January, go a handful of times and then stop bothering. Or they decide to eat more healthily, that lasts about a week, and then they revert back to their default state.

A few years ago, I discovered a fun and easy way to make New Year’s Resolutions more likely to stick. And that's simply to start them a week early.

The problem with New Year’s Resolutions is that we give them far too much weighting in our collective culture. It feels a ‘big deal’ to make a vow to ourselves that we’ll do this ‘big’ thing from January 1st and keep it up for the whole year.

If however, we start on 23rd December, it feels like less of a big deal and more like a simple change we could really have made whenever we wanted.

This has helped me stick to a few different resolutions over the years, although admittedly I’ve still got plenty that have fallen by the wayside.

Have a great week, and Merry Christmas :)

Ali

Stuff I’ve been enjoying this week

1. Fiction (Romance) - After loving One Day in December, I decided to explore the romance genre a bit more and read The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang which was the best in the category in the Goodreads Choice Awards. It was an interesting premise - an autistic woman hires a male escort to teach her about sex and relationships and stuff. It was alright - easy to read, engaging and even a little educational, but super predictable and the various conflicts felt too contrived.

2. Fiction (Fantasy) - I'm still slowly savouring the Audible audiobook of Oathbringer (Stormlight Archive #3) by Brandon Sanderson. But for bedtime Kindle reading, after finishing the Kiss Quotient and deciding that I'd had enough of sappy romances for a while, I started reading Malice by John Gwynne which is pretty solid so far.

3. Article - The Reason Many Ultrarich People Aren’t Satisfied With Their Wealth - An interesting look into the world of the super rich and what drives them. Also a good reminder in this season of excessive spending that money doesn't buy happiness beyond a certain point.