#130 - A Virgo's Guide To New Years Resolutions

Hi, hello, welcome to my twisted How To Make Plans mind, etc. First things first, this is a long and detailed guide to: plans! Making plans! Specifically, New Year’s Resolutions! A tradition I long thought of as trite and now adore because I find it really cute we built in a period of reflection & goal-setting as a society. Look at us go!

It all ties into my favorite thing to explain: processes that make things easier and logical to examine despite being some of the most emotionally loaded things you can admit to yourself.

It’s a lot to read, I do recommend doing the steps as you go through, but also know that you can take breaks whenever you want. That’s the beauty of the internet!

Okay! This is going to be some type of fun I promise. (And if it’s not fun, stop reading whenever you want to! I’m not forcin’ ya to be here babe but always appreciate everyone stopping by for however many cups of tea they’d like!)

You will need: paper, your favorite writing utensil, and sticky notes (and space on your desk/table to lay them all out).

Got ‘em? Let’ get it.

Step #1 - Surface! Those! Emotions!

Grab your paper & pen, time for some (super light) journaling!

Set a timer (for each or the whole thing depending on how much clock-glancing stresses you out) and then respond to these three prompts in this order:

1. This time next year I want to feel…
2. This time next year I want to be…
3. This time next year I want to have accomplished…

Now read those essays. Notice anything that stood out, anything that surprised you or felt especially true or powerful or intriguing. For bonus points: grab a highlighter and go to town!

Here’s what mine looked like:

Step #2 - Brainstorm babeeeey

Now that’s done, let’s go for goals.

A quick sidenote here: if making a list is all you want to do at this point, go for it! The reason I’m encouraging sticky notes is because we’re going to use them again later in the longer brainstorm. Lists are great, and if that’s the last step you want to take here, awesome. I love lists so much, I made one earlier this month and it had some really different goals on it than my sticky notes did.

Different modalities during a brainstorm make me think of different things, tangeants start and end in different places.

Grab your sticky notes and starting writing one idea/goal per sticky.

Try not to get too in your own head during this phase. No one is seeing or judging what you have on these.

Want to finish a manuscript that you’ve been working on for 5 years? Awesome! Want to do one push-up per day? Amazing! Read 100 books? Waaaay! Get as specific as you’d like! Be as grandiose as possible! Don’t limit yourself with that little thing called “reality” — we’ll have a chance to deal with that later.

Brainstorms are about getting ALL the ideas out there. Give yourself the most data possible to work with!

Do it a few times in a row, even!

I’m a fan of multiple brainstorm rounds for a few reasons:

• there’s no pressure to keep everything at the same level of detail
• things will come up during round 1 that you’ll want to elaborate on
• things will come up during round 1 that you just had to express but don’t feel any energy around

Step #3 - Clarify & Categorize

Look at your sticky notes and ask yourself any/many of the following questions:

• What goals stand out to you?
• What ideas do you have a lot of energy around?
• What are the things that would allow you to feel the most accomplished next year?
• What are the things that would facilitate the most happiness in your life?
• What excites you? Bores you?
• Is there one thing you want to do so that you never have to think “what if” again about it?

At this point, I grouped mine by general theme/category:

Okay, now I want you to pick one of the goals you have the most energy around and we’re going to drill down into why it matters.

But first, take a second to ask what the ultimate end result of this goal is. For example: I chose “Finish the Romcom Screenplay” so I’m going to define what “finish” will leave me feeling like the goal is accomplished. Does “finish” mean producing the rough draft, or am I going to try and get feedback and do revisions? Do I just want it to exist or will I not feel satisfied until I’ve put myself out there with query letters or attempts to find an agent?

None of those are in a hierarchy, btw. There is no award for doing the most ambitious form of the goal every single time. I say this explicitly because Grind Culture is so pervasive, and I think there can often be an echo that unless we’re maxing out at all times things aren’t worth doing.

We all have different outcomes, we are all starting from different places, with different support systems and obligations, don’t worry about what Should Be or Could Be, focus on being honest with yourself about what you want, what you really really want. (See if you make it to the end of the long tangents you get a Spice Girls reference reward!)

Got the final goal in mind? Let’s go!

Step #4 - Why?

In regards to your chosen goal, write one of the following sentences on your paper and finish it with a short statement. One full sentence! (If none of the prompts apply, make up your own! I trust ya.)

• “Finishing [this goal] will make me feel…
• “Accomplishing [this goal] is important because…
• “Accomplishing [this goal] will make ______ possible".

Now that you have that answer, I want you to write another single-sentence response below it that answers this question: why is [your answer to the first question] true or important?

Now that you have that new sentence, I’m going to ask again: why is [your answer to the second question] true or important?

One last sentence! (I bet you can guess what question I’m going to have you answer!)

Why is [your answer to the third question] true or important?

Sidebar: This process is officially called 5 Whys is a great way to drill down to the heart of motivations very quickly.

And motivations are important to understand! Because that’s the root that will allow goals to remain both important and urgent (a specific intersection that WILL come up later don’t you worry!) which will carry you through the slog of getting to the accomplishment. It won’t make it easy necessarily, but clarity always feels good. Honesty is amazing.

Motivations btw, don’t have to pass a purity test. If you want something for reasons that feel embarrassing or trite or silly, uh, who cares? You don’t have to tell your motivations to anyone but yourself! And if you can’t be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with? And if the answer is no one—uh oh! Call me! I’m very good at being non-judgmental re: self-hatred, confusion, and being scared of oneself or feeling too far gone on a lie/unspoken truth. It’s not fun but it happens and lies stack on top of each other and we get Giles Corey’d by our own guilt and that’s no way to live! Leave regrets in 2023!! I will eat! your! sins! Chomp ‘em right on down!

Take that guilt and let it be free! We’re surviving in unprecedented times of grief and despair and being crushed by the wheel but life is meant to be lived so we’re being really brave about everything and pushing forth through self-determination and understanding what’s meaningful to us to spend time doing!

This is probably a good time to give the very explicit statemtn that you don’t have to have goals. You can even have one goal! One (1) for the whole year! And you can make it an easy goal you accomplish on January 1st! What do I care about the difficulty levels of your goals? This is about you babe! No one else!! Get into it! Be just about you for the remainder of this essay time we’re about to spend together!

Now, take that same goal your wrote the 5 Whys about, it’s time for another round of brainstorming!

Step #5 - Detail Time!

Take your sticky notes and brainstorm all the mini-goals that you’ll need to accomplish it. It’s time to reckon with reality.

We’re going to Reverse Engineer the goal. Or as we say at meetings, “Goal work backward.”

Imagine it’s a year from now, and this goal is accomplished. What steps were necessary to get there? What pitfalls did you avoid along the way?

(If the goal is going to take the entire year, what are the pieces you need done by the end of each month? How much time does that take per week to accomplish? Per day?)

Grab your sticky notes and detail out the minutea, one nodule per sticky.

(I.E. Reading 12 non-fiction books? Are you budgeting for purchasing them? Making time to do weekly library trips? Do you have a list you’re getting through or ones you want to make sure you read? Is there a logging system you have in mind? An accountability system you want to set up in January?)

For mine, I started with analog:

And then realized I had too many notes and not enough sticky’s — so I used a digital whiteboard on Mural to make this:

I know this image looks like…a lot. And that’s because it is! None of us are born knowing how to [write a screenplay,] so research and reading are necessary support components. Be as specific as possible when it comes to making plans.

Top tip: being vague during the planning stages just puts more work on future you. Pick the screenplays you’re promising yourself you’ll read! It’s way more likely you’ll follow through.

(Sidenote: if you want to write a script this year I can’t recommend Ashley Ray’s Script Package enough. It’s an incredible resource and has helped me so much! Also makes a fun holiday gift for your writer friendo’s tbh!!)

This is a great time for my “lower the bar as much as you want” tangent. Don’t feel pressure to make your goals super hard and grandiose! It’s awesome if you want to finish a script, or an act of a script, or even just one page. Goals shouldn’t feel unattainable! They can be difficult, or require a lot of energy and consistency, but unattainable goals are just setting ourselves up for failure. Which makes actually going for it way harder.

Lower that bar babe! Are you busy as shit? Did this year throw curveballs your way that left you feeling bereft or down on yourself? Give yourself the lowest bar and celebrate clearing it! Checking off lists and accomplishing things feels awesome, and it begets more accomplishments. It’s all about that momentum. So let it build!

For the last two years, my writing goal has been to publish 52 essays on Substack. That was it. One essay per week was the plan to make sure I hit that number. And for the last two years, I’ve crushed that goal! It’s felt awesome to have something to build towards, something that I could at any time get “ahead” at by…writing more (the inner-goal of the goal). In 2022 I wasn’t sure I could do it, but one a week wasn’t scary. This year I kept the same goal because I wasn’t ready to define this ‘stack or challenge myself beyond what I thought I could accomplish. I didn’t want to double it to 100 or set myself a subscriber number to reach for. That wasn’t the goal, consistency was. I’m terrified of putting myself out there in so many ways, but this is my little snowglobe world where I get to define the terms, I get to practice hitting send and letting things exist in the world beyond the pages of my diary. That was important to me. Not the other metrics.

Step #6 - Take a breath & a break

Stand up! Drink water! Stretch out your hips!

This is the section where I remind you that if you got a little overwhelmed during all of this, that’s totally okay! It’s actually been most people’s response who I’ve done this with.

It’s really hard for our capitalism-focused brains to not feel the urge to max capacity every single thing we do. Sometimes it’s just realizing how many goals you have that can create a bit of panic (when will I get this all done?) or the mundanity of certain goals feels trite to write down.

But this is just me, telling you, it’s going to be okay. Being realistic about how much time we have to get things done can be heartbreaking, but it’s also very liberating. And our culture focuses SO MUCH on the people who are at the “top" that it’s hard to remember—that’s not the norm. And comparison really is the thief of joy.

It’s impressive because you did it. And the only person whose opinion matters when it comes to personal achievements is you. Accolades are nice, but they are not necessary. You have the completed creative work, or the new habit, or the wonderful experiences.

So take a deeeeeep breath in through your nose.

And then release it slooooowly out your nose!

(Look, good breathwork habits happening already!)

I’m having so much fun, are you having fun? Do you believe me when I say I have intensity problems? I think that so often when we feel like “we can’t get anything done” it’s because we haven’t been realistic about what it actually takes to get things done. Sure, John Hughes wrote the screenplay for The Breakfast Club in 48 hours but for most of us that’s just not how this shit works!

Don’t let reality deter you from your dreams! Instead, let reality guide your timeline for accomplishing them.

Step #7 - Pencil it in

You have 12 months to get this goal finished. (13 if you start right now which will totally help the momentum thing btw, you’ll feel so superior to everyone on January 1st if you’ve already got some days/weeks of resolution work under your belt!) So what do you need to have finished by the end of January, of February, of March (you get it). Break it down. More sticky notes babeeey!

Grab a calendar! Or, don’t!

Put your sticky notes in a line and see how long the line is.

Give yourself a timeline by asking: if this goal takes 12 months, what has to be done by the end of each month? How does that work integrate into your weekly schedule? Are you planning to work on this every day or sporadically?

Great! Now put some blocks in your gcal or your planner or bullet journal or even your Palm Pilot. Wherever you’ll see it!

Allow those blocks to be a consistent reminder of why you want to accomplish this in the first place, rather than feeling like an oppressive schedule.

(Remember! You are not allowed to use your goals and accomplishment timelines as a weapon of self-flagellation! This is a process, which means you’re gonna run it once, get the results, and in a year reflect on how it went. Make tweaks to the process, and do it again!)

Step #8 - You did great! You’re going to DO great!

Congratulations on making it to the end of this.

I know this was a lot. But I think a big component of follow-through is spending time planning. For a long time, I had vague goals and vague results. Which left me feeling bad about myself, my self-discipline, my ability to accomplish things. It was compounding my lack of self-worth and a constant erosion of self-esteem.

Getting Things Done feels great. It’s a service of myself, it’s in service of living life rather than continuing to be a passive participant in my own dreams.

Goals are great, you’re great, thanks for reading this, let me know if you have questions about any parts AND if you want to tell me one of your new year’s resolutions in the comments I would LOVE to hear all about it!

Okay. Let me know how it went and I hope everyone has a great rest of this year and exactly the level of productivity they want to be the next!

From The Vault:

Last year: #72 - Back To December (another essay about goal setting that’s a lot shorter and with more generalized advice!)

Two years ago: #16 - Public Luxury