I am a sucker for that new year energy.
Goals, dreams, resolutions, vision boards, reflection questions, brainstorming meetings…give me all of them. I am ready for bold intentions and BIG plans—and I’ve got the new calendars and planners to prove it.
Except.
It turns out that January 1 is just a day. And the person I am today, in January, is more or less the same person I was in December, and November, and October. Maybe the science is right: change happens best a little at a time.
This year, as I sat down to make my list of “ins” and “outs” of 2024, I noticed something interesting: almost all of the habits and intentions I identified were things I had started (or even fully adopted) last year. My list was less “break the system” and more “keep doing/refining/slightly modifying this system that works.”
The goals I identified felt a little bit new because Q4 tends to derail many of my habits. The overwhelm of campaign writing meant that I stopped intentionally time-boxing my day. A small surgery in November meant that I had to stop going to my favorite workout class throughout the holidays. The hustle of a very busy season meant that we had to temporarily scrap our slower family weekends.
When I identified 2024 priorities like “use Motion to plan my day,” “go to Bodypump three times a week,” or “prioritize Spontaneous Saturdays,” they weren’t actually new ideas—they were returns to the habits I already had; habits that I know make me feel my best.
When I asked team S+G about their own goals, their comments echoed my own. Many of us sat down to cast a vision for the new year and realized that we had already turned some of our goals into habits. We already knew what to do to—we just had to keep doing it.
We already looked (and worked) a lot like the people (and teammates) we wanted to be—no huge overhaul required.
So this year, as those January vibes make you feel like you want to throw everything out and start over, consider what’s already working. What can you just keep doing? What can you do more of? What can you do less of (or stop doing entirely)? What can you tweak a tiny bit to make it better?
As James Clear explains in Atomic Habits, if you get 1% better every day for a year, you’ll be 37x better by the end of 2024. Turns out those tiny pivots (truly, 1% is almost nothing) really add up!
So that’s the plan. Celebrate our wins and the habits we’ve already built. Do more of what serves us and less of what doesn’t. Aim to get 1% better every day. Exhale. Rest. Tackle the new year just like always—with excitement, energy, compassion, and good work.
What about you? What are your goals for 2024?
Team S+G’s (teeny tiny) 2024 Tweaks
- Lindsey: Shop less and use up what I have instead of buying new. Also, keep perfecting my morning routine.
- Ian: Practice saying no to things that don’t fill my bucket or get in the way of me spending time with my kids.
- Allison: Clear the kitchen island every night before going to bed and wear slippers while working from home.
- Maddie: Protect my peace and focus my energy on things that make me happy.
- Amanda: Make smaller grocery store trips, meal plan, and share leftovers with my mom. We’re trying to reduce the amount we throw away just because it went bad!
