This Week’s BIG Idea
This week I kept thinking a lot about new year’s resolutions. Although you don’t have to wait until a new year starts to make some sort of personal commitment, there’s something about the new calendar that makes new year’s resolutions feel fresh and encouraging. I watched some YouTube videos on this topic to look for inspiration and ideas and while I didn’t come up with anything particularly creative or unique, there are some things I’d like to focus on in 2023.
Below I included some of the most common new year’s resolutions from people for inspiration.
- Exercise on a regular basis
- Reconnect with old hobbies
- Design ideal habits
- Break bad habits
- Invest in yourself
- Take control of finances
- Declutter
- Learn a new skill
- Reach out to someone you admire
Personally, I’d like to explore the topics that will have the most impact on my personal life. This involves reading about philosophy, stoicism, business, online marketing, blogging, and happiness. To complement that list and make it more specific, I also wrote down a series of authors I’d like to focus on. Those authors include Ayn Rand, Ryan Holiday, Anthony Robbins, and Robert Greene, among others. I came up with the list of topics during one of my journaling sessions and I used my TBR to find some recurring authors. As you can see, I’m playing the long game, so this will probably take a couple of months, but I’ll share some results as soon as I can. What are your new year’s resolutions for 2023?
What I’m Working on
I’m still hard at work with The Daily Stoic, a book that features 366 meditations about a variety of topics. It took me weeks to read this book because I kept highlighting entire passages. Now I’m transcribing those notes in the form of a summary, but it’s taking longer than I had anticipated. That said, I’m proud of the end result and I’m sure I’ll go back to the summary on a regular basis because the notes cover topics such as happiness, wealth, relationships, stress, work, and more.
What I’m Listening to
Although I’m sharing this in video form, I used to listen to a recording from the Headspace website. I’ve been meditating on a daily basis for months and the practice has changed my life. That said, I have trouble concentrating and focusing when I meditate, so I want to try a guided meditation for a while to see how I feel. Headspace has been at the forefront of the online meditation space for years now and they have several resources available (some of them for free, like the video above) for anyone to use. I haven’t used guided meditations in a while, but I found that it’s actually easier to concentrate when I have someone else’s voice guiding me through the session.
What I’m Reading
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss: Like a lot of people who write about the productivity world on a regular basis, I’m a fan of Tim Ferriss. I’ve read The 4-Hour Workweek, listen to The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, and subscribe to his newsletter. Tools of Titans is an exciting book because it compiles the lessons and teachings Ferriss learned from world-class performers and compiles them in the same place. The result is a fantastic book, and one I’m highlighting the daylights out of. This is a long book (over 700 pages) and due to its unique structure, I won’t be writing a summary for the site. That said, I know I’m going to keep coming back to my notes and highlights often.
What I’m Watching
Since I just mentioned Tools of Titans, here’s something somewhat related to the book. One of its chapters compiles lessons from the popular content creator, Casey Neistat. Although most people were aware of what he does, I’d never watched the video above. I know his channel is extremely popular and that his videos are shared often, but “Make It Count” was new to me. This is one of those cases where the product speaks for itself, so if you haven’t already, watch the short clip and be prepared to feel inspired.
This Week’s Quote
“What if, when it came to your reading and learning, you prioritized quality over quantity? What if you read the few great books deeply instead of briefly skimming all the new books? Your shelves might be emptier, but your brain and your life would be fuller.”
Ryan Holiday
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