a workbook · riadms.com
you do not need a new you
a landmark starts a thing and cannot sustain it, and those are two different jobs. the one page for using the ten days of motivation a fresh start actually gives you.
do this on a real landmark, which is any of about seventy a year and not only january. pick the thing you have failed at before, write it at the top, and work down. it is for you and nobody else reads it.
- 01
pick the wall, and it can be arbitrary
january the first is random, and the randomness is the mechanism rather than the flaw. a landmark files your past failures in a previous period, so you stop carrying eleven attempts into the twelfth. Dai, Milkman and Riis measured this in 2014: searches for diet, gym visits and goal commitments all rise after the start of a week, a month, a year, a semester, a birthday or a holiday.
from me a monday counts. so does the first day back from a trip.
what is your wall, and what date is it? write both.
- 02
you get about seventy a year
52 mondays, 12 first-of-the-months, four seasons, one birthday, and every day you come back from somewhere different, move house or start a job. waiting for january is turning down sixty-nine other chances.
from me i waited for january for years while walking past all of these.
what are the next three landmarks in YOUR calendar? write them with their dates.
- 03
the ten days are for installing, not for impressing
a landmark is a starting device and people use it as a sustaining device. it buys about ten days of unusual willingness and then it stops. the worst thing to do with them is something impressive. the right thing is to build what runs after the motivation has gone.
from me the motivation has an expiry date and it is under two weeks. plan for that instead of being surprised by it.
what will you install in the first ten days? pay for it, put it in the calendar, tell one person. write which of the three.
- 04
make the first version the sick-in-bed version
the burst pushes you toward the ambitious version, which is exactly the one you will not keep. pick the version you could do while tired and unwell in your own room. ten minutes counts.
from me small is not a lowered bar. small is the version that survives february.
write the smallest version of the thing. then write it smaller.
- 05
make it entertaining, or it runs on willpower alone
if the activity itself gives you nothing, the only fuel is the landmark, and that ran out on day ten. anything that makes the doing of it enjoyable is worth more than any amount of resolve.
from me i get more out of making something fun than out of making myself do it.
what would make this genuinely enjoyable while you are doing it? one specific change.
- 06
plan the restart before you need it
everyone breaks the plan, including a small well-adjusted one. breaking it is not the failure. stopping when you break it is, and the way that happens is you turn one missed day into a verdict about who you are.
from me the sentence to watch for starts with i am not the kind of person who. it is very hard to come back from.
when you break it, which landmark do you restart on? name it now, in advance, while you are calm.
what is the thing, what is the wall, and what is the smallest version?