Hi everyone, and welcome back to Chromatic Conflux! It's almost 2021, so I wanted to publish one quick post about something I'll be attempting to do that year. It's called a yearly theme.
What's a Yearly Theme?
Well, if you want, you could just watch this excellent YouTube video on the topic, by CGP Grey. But don't worry, I'll get to it.
What's the Point of New Year's Resolutions?
Well, on a base level, it's because people have a perpetual desire to become better people, and the new year provides a natural marker for that.
But years are arbitrary, an artifact of our calendar. In the Hebrew calendar, the year begins on Rosh Hashanah, usually in September. And of course, the length of the year is arbitrary too–many ancient cultures used 360-day years, for instance. And Mars takes around 687 days to orbit the sun, which is very different from 365. So what makes January 1st so different from December 31st?
There's a very good reason that people make New Year's resolutions and not January-2nd-of-next-year-to-January-1st-of-the-year-after resolutions–and it's backed up by science. It's called the Fresh Start Effect, and it's pretty simple: humans are more likely to make changes in their life after clear mental milestones, like the beginning of a new year.
The Fresh Start Effect
Well, there's a very good reason that people make New Year's resolutions and not January-2nd-of-next-year-to-January-1st-of-the-year-after resolutions–and it's backed up by science. It's called the Fresh Start Effect, and it's pretty simple: humans are more likely to make changes in their life after clear mental milestones, like the beginning of a new year. This is because of a larger preference for chunking; thinking about things that are really more of a continuum as if they belong to meaningful sections. Chunking is great! It helps people think about things more intuitively, and allows people to become better versions of themselves in the new year.
Interlude: Word of the Year 2020
Lots of different organizations love to come up with a Word of the Year. It's mainly a publicity stunt, of course, but I think it's still kind of interesting. Merriam-Webster's is "pandemic." Dictionary.com (which chose based on user submissions) is going with "unprecedented." The Oxford English Dictionary couldn't decide, and is picking "COVID-19," "lockdown," "Black Lives Matter," and others. But the one that I find most interesting is the American Dialect Society's. The winner is "COVID"–not a huge surprise. But the runner-up? "2020."
Again, 2020 is just an arbitrary collection of days. January 1, 2020 was a lot more like December 31, 2019 than like today. But 2020 has been imbued with a societal meaning, an amalgamation of all the bad things that happened this year. Taylor Swift's 2020 albums "folklore" and "evermore" weren't just surprisingly good: they "saved 2020." The point is, people give years these meanings based on significant events that happened and milestones accomplished, and that's what New Year's resolutions take advantage of.
The point is, people give years these meanings based on significant events that happened and milestones accomplished, and that's what New Year's resolutions take advantage of.
There's just one problem:
New Year's Resolutions Don't Work
Citation: Every New Year's resolution ever.
The problem with New Year's resolutions, I think, is the same reason a lot of people struggle to go vegetarian. This is too hard, you'll think, and you lose momentum. You give up and eat a burger, decide not to go to the gym, break whatever resolution you may have only kept for a few days.
There Has to be a Better Way
Introducing: yearly themes. At this point, I should probably just quote from the CGP Grey video I mentioned at the beginning–it's not like I have anything better to say:
"To accomplish what you want out of resolutions, positive life change (but in a better way), allow me to suggest a gentler idea. Give yourself a theme. Instead of setting yourself up to fail with 'I'm going to lose x pounds by next year,' or, 'I'm going to read one book a week at least,' a theme would be something like 'Year of Reading,' or 'Year of Health.'
Now if that sounds a bit broad, that's the point. For some things, precision matters. For others, it doesn't. And when trying to build yourself into a better version of yourself, exact data points don't matter. All that matters is the trend line. If the trend is going in the right direction, so are you. Just moving a trend from negative to positive is hard enough without defining falling short of a goal as a failure. Heck, even just decelerating the negative is a positive.
"Stuck in a queue, what to do? Well, if it's the Year of Reading, why not open the book, instead of opening the anything else? That's it: you were at a branch and went one way instead of the other." –CGP Grey, "Your Theme"
Is there something you want more of in your life? Something you want less of? Well, life is a branching path, and it's the trend of your decisions, some big, but mostly small, that will get you to more or less. Stuck in a queue, what to do? Well, if it's the Year of Reading, why not open the book, instead of opening the anything else? That's it: you were at a branch and went one way instead of the other."
So, for 2021, I've decided I'll try a yearly theme:
2021: The Year of Attention
In 2021, I will try to become a more attentive person. Hopefully, this will manifest in a few different ways:
- When I'm in class, and my attention is drifting away from the topic in class, I will try to return my attention to the topic at hand. If the reason my attention is drifting away is because I don't understand what's happening, I'll try to ask questions until I understand. If it's because I feel like I already understand, I'll try to focus anyway to see if there's something else I can learn.
- When I'm not sure whether to incorporate someone else's feedback or not, I will. Paying attention to other people's suggestions, even if they claim they're unimportant, is the best way to make something people are happy with.
- When I'm not sure whether to listen to background music or put on a background podcast, I won't. I've found that I'm generally most productive in silence–it allows me to dedicate my full attention to the task I'm doing.
- When I'm doing a leisure activity, such as watching YouTube videos, and find that my attention has drifted away but I'm still watching, I'll try to stop doing the leisure activity. I'm supposed to be using it–it's not supposed to be using me.
- In general, I'll try to be more mindful of where my attention goes and try to make sure that it's going towards the things that I want it to be going towards. Deep work, the state of working on something without distractions for a long period of time, is super productive and feels great as well. I want to try to cultivate that.
Anyway, the crucial thing about these subthemes is they're not absolute, not unchangeable, and not goals per se.
Anyway, the crucial thing about these subthemes is that they're not absolute, not unchangeable, and not goals per se. All they're saying is that when I'm at a branch, I'll go the way of attention.
Conclusion
Anyway, this is just my yearly theme, based on a trait that I want to develop in myself. I wanted to share it with y'all because I think that there may be areas where a yearly theme can be helpful to you. Y'all should make yearly themes!
–beautifulthorns*
*No footnotes except this one! Probably for the best...