Well, it’s that glorious time of year when we start to get reminders to plan the next year. We get taunts from New Year’s Eve Resolutions and what we want to see in the next season. This would be great, if we could get the energy to finish just this day out strong. But this seems an odd way of approaching the month of January. For some reason, the concept of the calendar seems to drive in the idea that December, being the end of the year, should have major goals met. I would like to suggest a different way of approaching this time. And I’m not going to lie, a huge part of this revolves around the fact that the holidays are exhausting. You can prove this fact by science: try an experiment of going through the holidays without feeling exhausted. Motivation is in too great a deficit.
Rather than find the motivation to map out your life, I’m going to suggest that you give in to your desires. Don’t do any of the planning. Put all of that aside for the moment, until you have the motivation to plan with intention and purpose. Chances are, this is not how you would approach anything apart from your next Netflix binge (it’s always so much easier to map out which tv show we should watch first).
Holiday Breaks = Motivation Breaks
What I’m suggesting might sound like a poor use of your holiday. Doing nothing is just a fancy way of saying, “Be unproductive”, right? Well, yes, if the post ended right here. What I’m saying is that you not plan out your year… yet. In the mean time, use intention and purpose in this season, but to your current capacity. Spend this time on reflection so that you can make the most of your planning, when that time comes.
- What would you have liked to devote more or less of your time to over this year?
- How do you divide your time on a typical day? Which parts of this would you like to maintain and which parts would you like transform?
- What would you like your life to look like in 5 years? Or 10? What would have to change between now and then? If you broke those changes down into steps, what would be a first step to begin this year?
- What are areas of your life that you value but you have neglected?
Spend the holiday season reflecting on these questions and any others you would prioritize. Jot them down in the notes section of your day planner, your journal, the notes app on your phone, or maybe sketching it out. You can use these notes to begin thinking through how you would plan out 2018, or which New Year’s Eve Resolutions you would like to make (I have strong feelings about resolutions, and you can read about it later when we get closer to the end of the year).
