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Utopia Can Wait
Thoughts on launching into the new year.
“Utopia can wait.” It’s an utterance that came to me one morning last summer while I was journalling, and I’m making it the motto of this year. I’ll spare you the details of the context that mad me think of it. The gist of it, however, is reducing the weight of lofty goals. It’s a distilled idea of the plethora of mixed productivity and mindfulness advice out there.
Many people make New Year’s resolutions that are often too big and lack the essential elements of specificity to make them actual goals, and January motivation turns into neglect by the time March comes around.
I invite you to re-evaluate your resolutions today. Cut out the BS and set a few actionable goals. Not just in your mind. Write them down. Use one of the many established frameworks. I, for my part, am using a personal agile framework, which I’ll be writing about sometime soon. I break yearly goals down into quarterly focus areas, and then make it more granular by assigning specific tasks or time allotted to specific skill development into the classic two-week sprint. This helps me to actually estimate what’s manageable, and I often cut down on the goals during quarterly planning, as the initial estimate was just too utopic. It helps me get rid of a kind of urgency of wanting to get everything done at once. In reality, we really just need to break things down and take them step by step by step. Only then can we build sustainably, develop habits, and walk towards our own personal utopias.
I hope you manage to lose that nagging sense of urgency.
I wish you more presence.
I wish you the courage to assert yourself.
I wish you the strength and discipline that you manage to achieve the goals you set for yourself this year.
I wish you the sense of curiosity and wonder that this discipline will feel effortless.
Build Incrementally.
Keep up with your good habits.
Let go of the old.
Be interested, rather than trying to be interesting.
Embrace little changes.
