New Year, New Me!!!
I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase “new year, new me” ad nauseam every year around January 1st since the beginning of time (or at least since the ancient Babylonians started creating New Year’s resolutions). I love to use the phrase in a half-joking manner as I create my own resolutions.
I not only try to create new goals each year, but also each semester, and I’m always aware which ones are more likely to be successful than others. For example, every year I have a goal to work out more. Though I do end up working out for a few weeks here and there, but by the end of the year, I’m usually more likely to be laying in bed eating Teddy Grahams than hitting the gym. At the same time, I’ll also have a goal to do something like reading more books, which I’ll be successful at.
In 2017, some of my goals were to read 20 books, to be healthier and to be more positive. I ended up reading 21 books, created some healthier habits and maintained a more positive outlook throughout the year. In 2018, I want to continue to build momentum and expand upon these goals. Instead of reading a certain number of books, I aim to just spend more time reading rather than browsing social media or watching Youtube/Netflix. In the past year, I found that creating a numeric goal of books to read made me more likely to read short books, which kept me from reading a lot of books that were very interesting to me.
Beyond these goals, I was inspired by my friend Stephen to create a list of things that I wanted to accomplish, similar to a life audit. Basically, a life audit involves figuring out all of your hopes and dreams in life and deciding what you can be doing to get there. For me, this involved goals relating to my media consumption, creative projects, career, health and social interaction. However, I think that a major issue with New Year’s Resolutions is that they fail due to their inflexibility. I’m not sharing these goals with everyone because I feel like they could be completely different in a few weeks. Last year, I had a goal to take a certain amount of pictures, but as my relationship with photography changed, I began to care more about quality and meaning over quantity. Naturally, I ended up not getting even close to my goal, but ended up taking many pictures I was proud of, which I think is more important.
More than anything else, I believe that the New Year is a chance to remind ourselves that we have the capacity to grow and change. A growth mindset keeps us from staying the same or getting worse, pushing ourselves to be better every day. Though it’s sometimes easy to joke about how often new year’s resolutions are forgotten within a couple of weeks, we would likely all benefit by reminding ourselves regularly about how we can be better.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Longread
“Sociology of the Smartphone” by Adam Greenfield - this article was basically written for me! I love sociology and analyzing the impact of tech (ie smartphones) on our lives and this deep dive into it is extremely intriguing.
Playlist
bars - playlist I whipped really quick of some really solid verses that I like to listen to when I’m feeling strong flows and hard beats.
Web Project
The Year in Illustration - NYT has compiled illustrations found in their articles throughout the year for a very interesting viewing experience!
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends too! :~)
Love,
Nikhil