10 Things To Do in 2024
An alternative to New Year's resolutions, because I don't do them
Everyone’s all about yearly wrap-ups and end-of-year lists and best-of-2023s right now, and that’s all well and good. I love a list, as you well know.
But the bookend to the finale of a year is the start of another one, and with that comes a fresh round of goal-setting and New Year’s Resolutions.
UGH.
A few years ago, I quit making formal professional goals and resolutions altogether because they were really messing with my mental health.
However, as a list-ficionado (IT’S A WORD, I’M MAKING IT ONE, OK), I just decided to approach my need to cross things off in a different, more fun, less stressful way.
So last December, I made a list of “10 Things To Do in 2023.”
I suppose if you had to categorize the items, they would mostly fall under Personal Growth, but I specifically didn’t want to pin anything down into any category.
Some things were specifically tied to events, some were meant to unfold over the year, and some were more tenuous.
Here’s my list of 10 Things to Do in 2023 and how I fared with each Thing over the course of the year.
And for 2024, I’m going a step further:
Yes, I’m doing another 10 Things to Do list and I encourage you to make one too — they can be big, they can be small, they can be one-offs, they can be truly anything you want to be.
Maybe you don’t even do 10 things! Start with two or five and see how it goes. No pressure.
But if you want to play along and do even more than a single list, you can get my Monthly Review Notion Dashboard, which is what I’ll be using to document my year.
And it features:
a daily journal wth a template for noting your weekly wins (and for tracking stuff like meditations and workouts)
a Wins database if you want to go big and keep track of them there
of course, the 10 Things list
a monthly “what happened!?” timeline
and an overall yearly review section to note books read (or shows watched, you can customize), big experiences, and cool and useful purchases. I always like to see what I bought over the course of a year!
If learning more about Notion is on your 10 Things to Do list, I can help with that too. Just reply or comment and we’ll get you started!
One more thing:
As a holiday gift to me, could you do me a favor and share this newsletter with someone you think would enjoy it?
I’d love to have new subscribers and readers in 2024 (not a hard and fast goal, but a hope) and sharing it personally with like-minded friends is much more effective than posting stuff on Instagram these days.
I appreciate all of you for coming along on this little experiment, and I’m excited to keep it going!