7 Ways of Hacking New Years Resolutions: A Christmas Odyssey 🎄❄️
It’s likely that for the first 3 weeks of this year all your social media feeds have been swamped with articles about setting New Year’s resolutions.
Yet here we are on January 17th at the start of a new year full of opportunities, and I think it's appropriate to ask some questions: What’s the point of setting a resolution? Why do so few of us set them? Do they work?
I have found that it’s chiefly because our resolutions can feel defeating at times when we don’t accomplish them.
Most resolutions require some kind of long-term commitment that requires us to build on what we have accomplished in years prior, making them feel uninspired or repetitive.
Yet despite all of this, I can personally and confidently say they work. Throughout my life, whether I’ve competed as a sales professional or I’ve been running marathons I have found that my outlook is always at its best when I approach my resolutions as challenging projects to overcome benchmark performances.
Having this mindset has helped me grow in the areas of my life where I have chosen to focus my energy.
As a result, in 2020 I decided to set a couple of immersive challenges as resolutions to push myself to grow mental toughness and intellectual rigor.
Here are 7 ways to hack new years resolutions from the perspective of a marathon running developer:
- Pick challenging projects related to your long-term goals.
The types of challenge style projects that prove to be the most effective in encouraging growth are ones that are connected to our long-term goals.
At the end of 2019, I knew I wanted a career in technology after having experimented with UI and UX design concepts working as a Freelance Brand Manager earlier that year. It had become one of my long-term goals, so I set completing a web development Bootcamp as a resolution.
I did my research and when I returned from a vacation in January 2020 I found Lighthouse Labs web development Bootcamp and enrolled in time to join their March 29th cohort.
The second long term goal I chose to set a resolution around was one that I had set in 2017 and struggled to stay committed to from 2018 through to 2019. After having struggled with weight management in my early 20s, I ran a marathon in 2017 and set a long-term goal of running Ironman by age 40.
I was looking to return to my running practice so after graduating from my web development Bootcamp in June I trained for and ran a half marathon, followed by a full marathon. After I completed these two challenges I also got to work setting milestones like logging my highest amount of annual km (1, 325km) and achieving a 5km run in under 25 mins.
It all culminated in deciding to run the 4–4–48 challenge over Christmas (December 24th and 25th) in support of The United Way.
2. Find challenges with clear terms and deadlines that you have to adhere to.
Finding challenges with clear terms of completion eliminate so many problems brought up by our tendency to have ambiguous expectations of ourselves when we are setting resolutions.
Both LHL’s web development Bootcamp and the 4–4–48 challenge have clear expectations. The Bootcamp followed a curriculum of weekly units made up of readings, assignments, and projects over the course of three months. 4–4–48 involves running 4 miles (6.43km) every 4 hours for 48 hours totaling 48 miles (77.24km).
3. Start with the challenging part first.
A typical project is made up of several tasks, if we begin by sorting them in order of difficulty, we can complete them starting with the most challenging task first. This vastly improves our outlook for the remainder of the challenge.
Mark Twain famously said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” I first learned this quote from a Brian Tracey video during a Time Management course I took as a Sales Manager at Glentel Inc and the lesson always stuck with me.
One of my favorite parts of LHL’s Bootcamp is that the curriculum begins with three weeks of JavaScript fundamentals. This component of the course can be widely seen as its most challenging because of how new everything feels.
I decided that the most challenging component about running the 4–4–48 challenge would likely be completing the overnight runs so I began with these. I began my first run at 1 am on December 24th in dry weather and successfully completed the following 5 am and 9 am runs as well. By the time 1 pm on December 24th rolled around, I felt reassured and confident knowing that I had completed the most difficult tasks of the challenge first.
At least that’s what I thought.
4. Be resourceful and find tools, libraries, or frameworks that can be leveraged to complete your tasks.
When completing established challenges we can get through them using resources that have proven to be helpful to others.
As a Junior developer, there are many times that we encounter problems that seem out of the breadth of our knowledge. All throughout Bootcamp, we found that a carefully worded Stack Overflow search goes a long way in helping us resolve them.
In the same way that prior to beginning my first winter running season, my wife suggested that I get winter running gear like cleats, gloves, and a hood based on an article she had read. When it began to snow excessively on December 24th at 9 pm, I knew that the challenging part was just getting started. It snowed all through the night of December 25th the world awoke to a winter wonderland.
5. Expect the most viable product result from your inaugural challenge.
We should always approach setting project performance goals by applying flexibility in equal measure to our overall experience. Setbacks suffered the first time we complete challenges lead us to be better prepared for them the next time we face them.
This was something I witnessed during 4–4–48 when I noticed the splitting foot pain I felt after running at 1 pm on December 25th because I had logged over 1,000 km on the shoes I was wearing. This is when I noticed that I had waited too long to switch them out.
Similarly, during Bootcamp my finals team was advised by a mentor we respected that we should use an ExpressJS backend server instead of a Ruby on Rails API. Doing so would have allowed simple implementation of real-time updates between users using SocketsIO for the implementation of a chat or a map trace.
Regardless of why these, amongst other setbacks happen, they help us be mindful not to repeat them again. Our first time completing a project style challenge, we should aim for it to be the bare minimum needed to fulfill its completion requirements. This is a concept known in programming as the most viable product (MVP). When we pick challenges with implications over our long-term goals we will be presented with many opportunities to repeat them and defeat whatever benchmark we set now.
By running our own race, against our own numbers we establish benchmarks that we can be proud of and look forward to defeating.
6. Lint your code, stretch, and roll. Chop wood, carry water.
During the Bootcamp, the importance of linting code, which is a practice of making sure that our code is clean and organized is highly emphasized. It’s a coding protocol that is meant to help us debug our code. Similarly, the daily practices of stretching and foam rolling are to prevent running injuries. Any resolution will likely include these types of repetitive and mundane tasks that we do in order to improve our outcomes.
They’re like the Zen reflection “chop wood, carry water”. This reflection makes reference to the meditative qualities that tasks offer through their simplicity and repetitiveness. They empty the mind of disruptive thinking and help us focus on what needs to get done, which can prove to be restorative.
7. Change lanes whenever you can.
We should never miss an opportunity to change lanes and learn from another’s perspective when we are attempting to achieve our goals.
During my journey to completing both of these challenges this year, I had the opportunity to discuss them with many incredible people.
When we allow the people in our lives to offer us feedback they can hold us accountable and help us grow. We should always keep an open mind in trying to see how others approach challenges and learn from what they have to say.
Conclusion
I hope these hacks are able to help you in achieving all your future goals and resolutions as they have helped me. If you find any of these tips useful please consider making a donation to the Toronto United Way.
Now with all of this in mind have you set a resolution for the new year? What are some of the ways you’ve found to accomplish your New Year’s resolutions? Comment with a response below!
