Hey friends,

First of all a very Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating! And for those who aren’t, I hope that this holiday season has still been a safe and welcome break for you all. Before we begin, I hope you all have been enjoying these email newsletters and if you do it would mean the world to me if you shared this post with someone else. I’m currently at 56 subscribers and have set the ambitious goal to get to 100 subscribers by the end of the year. Appreciate you guys as always for reading and your feedback!

In this week’s issue, we will cover:

• New Year’s Systems

• The Annual Review

• The Visualize Value Chrome Extension

• The Beatles: Get Back

• A quote from Shonda Rhimes

Let’s get into it!

New Year's Systems

We're all familiar with the above quote often misattributed to Albert Einstein. I've been thinking about this quote the past few days as we come to the end of the year. Across America, as many as 50% of adults make New Year's Resolutions and write them all in their bullet journals for the new year. However, according to research fewer than 10% actually end up following them for more than a few months.

I've been guilty of this in the past as well. My family and I often have an Annual Family Meeting to talk about our goals, type them up in a word document, and then proceed to absolutely ignore them.

This year, I'm approaching my New Year's Resolutions differently. I've been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear recently and this has completely changed my perspectives on personal development and success. In the first few chapters of the book, Clear basically eviscerates the concepts of goals and by extension "resolutions".

He writes that both winners and losers have the same goals. Every Olympian wanted to win the gold medal and every candidate wanted to get the job. Therefore, simply having a goal is not enough - what's actually important is achieving the change needed to accomplish them.

Goals, quite frankly, are useless by themselves because they aren't an effective avenue for consistent and lasting change. Goals or resolutions focus entirely on the results you desire. While it is certainly helpful to be clear about what you want, simply being aware of the result is not enough.

Systems, on the other hand, are about the process that leads to the results that you want. You should "trust the process", not lay your hopes in goals. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for actually making progress towards the end. Setting your New Year's Resolutions is just the first step.

When all your work is focused on particular goals there's nothing left to push you forward after achieving them. This is a trap of short term thinking. You don't want to lose 10 pounds - you want to become a healthy person on the back of a system that makes sure that you exercise for 30 mins every day.

Therefore, instead of simply listing our goals or resolutions for the year, we should go a step forward and build the systems that will help us achieve those end goals. Breaking the goals down into actionable steps that we can do every day to incrementally get better is the name of the game.

So instead of succumbing to insanity again this year, let's all take the further step from setting our New Year's Resolutions and plan New Year's Systems for 2021. We don't want to a part of the 90% of people who will quit a few months into the year, but rather we want to implement a system and processes that will actually lead us to achieve those goals.

The Annual Review

Keeping with the theme of New Year's practices, I came across the concept of an annual review from Ali Abdaal's newsletter. The annual review is basically a sit-down-self-exploration exercise where you reflect on how your year has gone in the hope that we gain insights to improve the next. Ali shared some questions to start you off on your review and these were some of my favorites:

• When have you felt proud of yourself in 2020? What were you doing?

• If you had to teach one thing you learned this year (that would improve one’s quality of life) what would that be?

• What kept you up at night with excitement this year? Was it worth it? Would you want to do more of it?

• How did you have fun differently in 2020?

• What have you learned about the way that you deal with uncertainty in 2020?

• What things did you stop caring about in 2020?

• What new habits did you create in 2020? Which ones would you want to keep?

Visualize Value Chrome Extension

I wrote about Visualize Value on the last issue and heard that many of you enjoyed the account. Since then, Gabriel Lobl partnered with Visualize Value to release a chrome extension with the Visualize Value illustrations. Whenever you open a new tab in Chrome it shows you one of their thought-provoking graphics along with a message that provides you, well I guess, visual value.

I've only had it for a few days but I think it's a great tool for self-reflection. It makes you stop and contemplate every time you click Ctrl + T. In fact, I'm so used to instantly typing in words after I open a new tab and opening websites, that there actually have been many times I've actually annoyed myself because I've missed reading an interesting graphic as it opens another page. You can click here to check it out and download it for yourself.

The Beatles: Get Back

August 2021 cannot get here soon enough. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a huge Beatles fan. In fact, the only semblance of personality in the room that I've lived in for the last 3 years is a Beatles Abbey Road poster that I only put up a few months into quarantine because I was spending a lot more time sequestered inside.

Peter Jackson gave us all a sneak peek into the documentary he's been working on based on the Beatles' recording of the Let it Be Album. He has about 56 hours of footage of the Beatles horsing around and creating music that is still as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. The trailer above is full of laughs and really shows you the personality of the band that has undoubtedly changed both music and the world.

Quote of the Week

That’s all for this week and thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate your support on this new endeavor of mine. As always, feel free to reach out to me by either replying to this email or hitting me up on social media to discuss the topics or any ways I could make this newsletter better. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays once again! Until next week - stay safe!