Chasing Novelty
Build Yourself a Truly New Year
Greetings from the last day of 2025. Some of you will read this from the future, once the clock has ticked past midnight in your time zone or the ball has dropped or the fireworks have burst overhead. But whenever you get around to it, I hope it resonates for you.
Every December, I sit down to think how I’d like to approach the new year. The quiet days between Christmas and January 1st are good for reflection. This past year has been mostly about getting back to where I wanted to be, quite literally: in my own apartment, surrounded by my books, working my job, able to spend time with friends. But as the end of the year inched nearer, there’s been a phrase floating around that has crept under my skin. It’s not particularly new, just bothering me more than usual:
New Year, New You.
Excuse me. I’m not looking for a new me, and I kind of resent the implication that I should be. I understand the line references goals and productivity and accomplishments and plans, all the things you are supposedly striving to achieve in the year to come. But those are activities. Trips, exercise programs, new jobs, habits, whatever. They don’t change the person you are. Nor should they.
Nothing magical happens when we cross into a new year. It doesn’t change you. And frankly, the plans you’ve made don’t magically become easier to follow through with, either. As the new-year products ramp up their advertising—the productivity books and coaching programs and gym memberships and planners—it’s important to remember that this arbitrary date on the man-made calendar alters nothing. The you who wakes up on the 1st will be the same one who woke up on December 31st—though possibly slightly more hung over. It’s your brain and your decisions and your actions that will change your circumstances, not the shiny new year.
Maybe you’d like to shift your life onto a new trajectory. Great! Go for it! But don’t hang your identity on your ability to lose twenty pounds or get a book published or land that promotion. You are who you are without any of that, and the person you are deserves a pat on the back for getting this far.
That said, I’ve heard some interesting approaches to goal setting recently. I don’t do resolutions, but goals—with plans and systems to make them happen—feel much more likely to earn me a bit of progress.
In a recent interview with Ryan Holiday, entrepreneur Jesse Itzler recommended two types of goal-making, each of which were inspired by a different person. The first was to set one really big goal for the year. A single, sizeable thing that will take up the year, the sort where you look back and say “That’s the year I did X.” Train for and run your first marathon. Start your own business. Take a sabbatical and travel through Asia. The rest of your life runs around this single large goal, and it might not seem like a lot, but a decade from now you’ll have accumulated ten impressive accomplishments.
Itzler’s second recommendation was to do something once every other month you would not ordinarily do. It can be large or small, just something you would not typically take time for or that you keep talking about but never get around to doing. His examples included taking his kids to a Broadway show and camping with them on Mount Washington on an icy cold night, but it could be going sky diving or volunteering one weekend with Habitat for Humanity or getting on stage for open mic night at a comedy club. By the end of the year, those things will add up, and in a decade, you’ll have sixty memorable experiences.
What I love about these two recommendations is they aren’t about health or productivity, which I think serve as the focus for most people’s goals at the start of the year. Instead, they are about opening up your life, broadening your experiences and your horizon. You can make them about seeing new things or connecting with new people or reaffirming existing relationships. Sure, you can push your own limits—do things that scare you or that feel impossible—or you can do things that are quiet and soul-nurturing.
Do I have productivity goals for 2026? Of course, though in my case it’s more about finding my best habits from previous years and trying to recreate those routines. Because routine is the last piece I need in order to get my life back on track.
But am I planning six things to do this year, one for every other month? I am. It’s still a work in progress, and some are calendar specific. For instance, now that I no longer have to travel east for the holidays, I think it might be fun to volunteer next year to help assemble a float for the Rose Parade. But dreaming up the ideas is half the fun, and I don’t need the first one until February.
What six things might you do in 2026? Could you plan a couple now? Put them on your calendar? How much more joyful would that be than just dragging yourself to the gym? Yes, go to the gym or for a walk or whatever—your health is important. But make the new year about doing something actually new.
Today’s the final day for my December Writing Challenge. If you played along, how did it go? Did you get some words down most days? If not, did it still feel like you wrote more than you might have otherwise? Whatever your mileage, I hope the challenge left you excited to write your way through 2026. Remember that all the words count, and they add up faster than you might expect.
I’ll be back in a few days with my first post of the new year, and in it I’ll be laying out my plans for the newsletter going forward. We’ll be resuming craft posts, among other things, and I look forward to sharing.
Meanwhile, I wish you all a safe and joyous new year, whatever your plans. Thank you so much for joining me here this year, and for reading and commenting. I’m excited to learn what you’ll be up to in the coming months. Until the next one!🥰
I love this so much!! I’m totally with you on the “New Year, New You” part, and the idea of a big goal and/or building in new experiences has given me a lot to think about. Thank you!
We're on the same page about "New Year, New You" productivity goals. No thanks. I just wrote a post today about setting creative/writing intentions by the lunar cycle. I like the suggestions you've brought here as well! I might try the every second month challenge!