Begin Your Resolutions on Feb. 1

I don't know who needs to hear this, but you don't have to start your New Year's Resolutions on January 1.

This is especially relevant for those of us who want to make daily lifestyle changes, such as reading, meditating, exercising, etc. 

We've been asked about our New Year's Resolutions several times in the past few weeks and each time we answer with varying degrees of specificity, "Read more books! / I'm gonna exercise every morning before work. / I want to spend less time listening to podcasts..."

We're very clear on which of our habits we want to change. It's harder to see a path forward that's meaningful, consistent, and attainable. 

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The Case for Beginning on February 1

Let's zoom out for a second... what's the purpose of setting goals, intentions, and resolutions for the year ahead?

We do it to change our experience of our lives. To be more present, healthier, more joyful, more successful. These results happen over time through sustained actions. 

From this perspective, we can easily see that meditating for 3 minutes every day from February through December is more gratifying than meditating for 15 minutes from January 1st to February 21st. 

Especially if your vision for the New Year involves something you haven't done before, you might not know exactly what will work and what it will take to be consistent. 

Consider Using January for Experimentation

Even with the advanced predictive capabilities of our powerful brains, whenever we start doing something new we encounter unexpected variables. An experiment is the perfect container for this encounter because it allows us to harvest useful data we can use to refine our design. 

Note: This approach is not always necessary or useful. For example, last year I set a goal to read 30 books; I read 25. I see nothing worth tweaking there so I'm going to run it back as is. As always, take what's useful for you and leave the rest :)

If this approach sounds useful to you, here are your action items:

1. Get clear on what changes you'd love to experience this year. 

2. Design an experiment (or experiments) to run during January. Write them down in a notebook or journal. 

3. Put time on your calendar at the end of this month (perhaps the week of Jan. 27th to write a reflection on your experiment:

   1. What worked? 

   2. What didn't?

   3. What next?

4. Refine your experiment as needed and write your revised goal!