New Year’s Revolution

Happy New Year!

If you’ve been following me for some time you know that… it’s been a while. It’s not that I’ve stopped writing, but that my writing has been focused elsewhere. Every time I thought about you here, and the goals I had set for 2024 for the number of times I was going to publish, I felt ashamed. Like I had let you down, even though it was my goal. If you look back on 2024 with some regrets like I do, then this one is for you.

2024 was a reminder to me of one of the great truths of our time: it’s really easy to get distracted.

I know you know that. But, here’s the thing, I know that too, and it didn’t help me. I read a lot of history this year and one of my most fascinating take aways — one that wasn’t even the goal of the books I was reading — was how different our lives are today from centuries past. We consume more, we move faster, we travel more, we experience more variety in experience, community, and food (thank God), but most of all, we have access to an overwhelming amount of information and entertainment. All of that leads to what is perhaps the biggest change of the last 100 years: we don’t nearly experience as much boredom as generations past. There are far more things to draw our attention.

It’s crazy to me that it was over 2,000 years ago that Paul wrote these words:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

It reads like he wrote it last week. Can you imagine what he would say about today?

One thing that 2024 did bring me though, is a growing realization that the person I continually desire to be is fundamentally incompatible with a distraction-filled world. I desire to be well read, peaceful, creative, and wise — none of which can be achieved via TikTok, YouTube, or Netflix. With each new layer of this realization, I’ve made more and more change to my consumption habits. So, I want to start off the year with an admonition; with a truth that is becoming more and more apparent to me: we cannot be our best selves in this world without learning to take intentional breaks from it. We cannot expect that we will change our habits through sheer will power. That’s why the best way to make a change is to completely overthrow our old ways of doing things.

As history tells it, a Spanish conquistador named Hernán Cortés burned his ships after landing with his men in Mexico in the early 1500s. He decided that leaving no possible means of retreat was the only way to motivate his exhausted crew. Cortés knew the fundamental human condition. If there is a way out of doing a hard thing, we humans have a tendency to find it. That is why I want to suggest, both to you and to myself, that perhaps this year, you and I don’t need a New Year’s Resolution, we need a New Year’s Revolution.

• Don’t say you are “going to be on Instagram less,” delete that app.
• Don’t say you are going to “save money,” drop a few of those subscriptions you keep meaning to end.
• Don’t pretend like you are taking a break from that unhealthy person, block them now so you don’t have a way back.
• And if you are trying to start a new habit or end a bad one, tell people you respect about your goal and ask them to hold you accountable.

It’s time we revolutionized our approach to personal growth. If you know how you want to be better this year, then burn the boats and don’t give yourself a way out.

Andrew