I gave up making New Year's Resolutions for myself a long time ago.
Instead, I adopted a practice a friend once shared with me and began choosing "themes" for the year ahead.
My 2022 themes were "Create", "Gratitude", and "Better".
If I had to rate myself, I'd give myself a solid B+... some good work in each of those areas, but there was definitive room for improvement.
And in that spirit, here are my themes for 2023.*
Program
There are a lot of creative things I have planned for this coming year (including an illustrated storybook for HR professionals, a podcast, and more) and a few health goals I'd like to achieve. But if I'm going to have any chance at getting these things done, I'll need to stick to a firm schedule... which is something I haven't always been great at doing in my personal life.
A huge reason I haven't missed publishing a single dpThoughts newsletter in the past three years is that I have dedicated "dpThoughts" writing time blocked off in my calendar three times every week. If I program time in my calendar for what I want to get done, it gets done.
So this year, I'm going to program time in my calendar for all of my extra-curricular initiatives... and make those time blocks as important as any other commitment I make.
Persevere
Perseverance isn't a problem for me in the areas of my life where I feel some form of personal obligation: my family and my work, to name two examples. But too often, when the only commitment I have is to myself, I have a bad habit of setting aside projects before they're complete. I always intend to get back to them when I have "more time", of course... and you can guess how that usually goes.
But as I wrote above, I have a few things I want to accomplish this year... so perseverance in my personal endeavours is going to be a key theme. (The "programming" should help.)
Positive
Let's face it: there hasn't been a lot of positivity over the last three years. COVID, war, global inflation... the list of negative events goes on, and on, and on.
I've always considered myself a "realist", not an optimist, but this year I'm going to dial up my positive thinking and actions. I can't manifest a positive 2023 for everybody, of course, but I can certainly do my part for myself and the people around me.
Those are my themes for 2023.
What are yours?
* That green card you see in the photo is sitting on my desk right now, and will remain there all year to ensure my themes are top of mind every day; an identical card sits on my nightstand so my three words are the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see before I go to sleep. I can hardly expect to make progress on my themes if I can't remember what they are, right?
P.S. If keeping your new year's resolutions has proven problematic in the past, choosing a theme for the year is something you might wish to try. If you'd like a few ideas, you can read about my 2020, 2021, and 2022 themes by clicking the links.