Every Yes is a Thousand Noes

As the New Year rolls around, it’s easy to commit to a bunch of new things intended to turn you into a Whole New You. But commitment comes with a cost. When you say Yes to one thing, you’re implicitly saying No to many others. 

The Problem of Limited Time

The problem is that nobody has unlimited time. Most of us work for a living. And we have to sleep and eat and exercise and all the other essentials. A week contains 168 hours, but most of those are already spoken for. If you’re lucky, you’ve got one free hour per day that you could commit to something new. 

An hour per day is seven hours per week. Which is a lot. With seven hours per week, in a year’s time, you could:

• Get a lot fitter than you are right now. 
• Write a novel. 
• Learn a foreign language. 
• Build a following on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. 
• Read all those books you always wanted to read. 
• Binge-watch all the episodes of several long series on Netflix. 
• Grow an amazing garden. 
• Fix everything broken in your house. 
• Hundreds of other things—fill in the blank with your own private dream.

But you can’t do all of those things. You just can’t. If you try, you’ll burn hot for about three days, and then you’ll flame out, and then next year will be just like last year.

Pick One and Stick To It

So pick just one of those and commit to it for a year. You can always regroup at the end of the year and see if it gave you what you thought it would. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t. But in a year, you’ll know if it was worth the candle, and next year you might choose something different. 

But this year, just for this year, pick one thing. One “Project of the Year.”

And now stick to it for the whole year.

Yes, But How Do You Stick To It?

Some things are easy to stick to. Binge-watching Netflix doesn’t take any discipline. But getting fitter does. Or writing a novel. Or learning a language. So here are a couple of things you can do to help with the discipline thing. 

First, schedule time to do it. Maybe mark your electronic calender with the days and times you’re going to do it. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you when it’s time. Whatever it takes to remind you that it’s time to work on your Project of the Year.

But scheduling time only goes so far. Because when the time comes around, there are always excuses. Trust me, I know them all, because I’ve used them all. 

The only way to fight excuses is with motivation. Here’s something I’ll be trying this year to help with the motivation thing. It works for some people, so it might work for me, and it might work for you: 

• Set a timer on your phone for late in the day, about 15 minutes before bedtime. 
• When the timer goes off, shut down whatever you’re doing. This may take a few minutes. That’s fine. Take those few minutes and gracefully shut down. There’s no rush here. 
• Spend about 5 minutes journaling about your current Project of the Year, whatever it is. What is the next step you want to take? What problem might you run into? What ideas do you have so far for dealing with that problem? Please note: you don’t have to solve the problem. Just be aware of it.
• Now go to bed and let your subconscious mind work on the problem. Or not. You can’t control your subconscious mind. You can lead a horse to water, but it’ll only drink if it wants to. 
• In the morning when you wake up, you’ll be eager to work on your Project of the Year. You just will. 

That Sounds Too Good To Be True

The above idea sounds too simple. How could that actually work? 

For one thing, it reminds you every day that you have a Project of the Year. And a big part of motivation is just keeping your Project of the Year at the top of your mind. 

For another thing, it gets your subconscious mind excited about your Project of the Year. And your subconscious mind is the little guy that’s so good at coming up with excuses. When your subconscious mind is excited, you’re excited. Your subconscious mind is your secret helper. 

Finally, your subconscious mind is a lot smarter than you are. Oh, sure, you’re smart. You’re a writer, and all writers are smart. But your subconscious mind is smarter. Mine has solved countless math problems while I slept. Which is useful to me, because I solve math problems for a living—that’s what my day job is. And I know from experience that when I wake up in the morning and my subconscious mind has solved a problem, I’m incredibly eager to get to work to fill in the details. 

Homework:

If you’re in on this, here’s your homework in 4 easy steps:

1. Pick your Project of the Year. Just one. Not two, not three, and definitely not seven.
2. Take a look at your life and figure out how many hours you have per week for your Project of the Year. Can you find 3 hours per week? Or 5? Or maybe even 7? If you can’t find enough hours, are there some things you said Yes to in previous years that you could now say No to?
3. Schedule time to work on your Project of the Year. Pick days of the week and a time block in each of those days. Write it down in your journal or on your calendar. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you. 
4. Schedule 15 minutes at the end of every day to cue up your subconscious mind to think about your Project of the Year. This is NOT time to work on the Project of the Year. This is time to think about it and get your secret helper excited about it. 

Let me know how this works out for you. And let me know if you find ways to make it work even better.