I spent a good chunk of New Year’s Day looking back at 2019 and what went right (and wrong) for me in the critical areas of my life. For me, that includes how I did with my family and friends, the various elements of MacSparky, the legal practice, and taking care of myself. I usually do this navel-gazing on my birthday, but I didn’t want to wait until February this year.  The reason I did it on January 1 this year was partly because we just started a new month, year, and decade.

I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about things they’d like to change as we head into a new decade. We’ll be talking about this in next week’s episode of Focused. In the meantime, I recommend not worrying too much about resolutions but instead building some new habits.

One of the best pieces of advice I received when I left my firm job to start my own thing, was to be mindful of all the new defaults I’d get to pick with repotting myself. It was an opportunity to build new habits. 

Resolutions are always about the finish line. (“I want to lose weight.”) Habits are about process. (“I want to stock the fridge with spicy carrots every day instead of cookies.”) The only way to get to a finish line is with a process. Don’t make new resolutions this decade. Make new habits instead. If you’d like to learn more about this, one of the best books I read in 2019 was James Clear’s Atomic Habits.