Forget about New Year’s resolutions, lower the bar, let go and change the plan when necessary. Sounds tempting? That’s good! Because these are some of the most important steps to achieving goals and implementing changes.
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- Is the New Year a good time for change?
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- Follow our basic rules when introducing changes in life
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- Magda Blaszczyk (nozbe.pl/magda)
- Michael Sliwinski (@msliwinski)
🔗 Show notes
- A short article by a psychotherapist
- The Podcast episode by Michael and Radek Pietruszewski
- 2023 yearly review by Michael
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Read this episode’s transcript if you prefer
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the new episode of No Office Podcast. Today, we’ll talk about New Year’s resolutions, goals, tips and tricks, how to do the new year, new me thing, how to make it your best year ever, and how to not stress about it. and what we have learned over the years, how we did manage to make our years the best ever. Hello, Magda. Hello, welcome to the 56th episode, Time Flies. Oh, yes, it does. And this is 2025, happy new year. Yeah, happy new year, new year. Let’s see, let’s see, is it really the best time for bringing changes and doing all those New Year’s resolutions. Is January, January 1st or the first half of January, a good time? According to me and my research, on one hand, it’s good because it has this ritualistic element. And it gives you some, you know, like, okay, new year, new me, let’s start, many people do this. So maybe it can work. But on the other hand, first or fifth of January is the same day as any other day. So really, it’s best to introduce changes and to follow the moment. When I feel that I really need something or when I feel that I miss something or when I find out something and then say, “Yes, I want to follow it,” then it’s good to do this because your changes and your motivation and then the persistence of doing something is best when you do it when you are totally ready, when the thing is totally yours, and when you fill this goal or this project with your whole self. That’s what I think. All right. I kind of agree, but not really, because sometimes you just need a nudge. And for me, action motivates action. So anyway, happy new year, Mike St Pierre, who’s also a listener right now. So Mike, have a great one. And yeah, the thing is, people like the closure of one year, and then, you know, the beginning of the new year. Also, after the, you know, gluttony, and lots of food of Christmas, and it’s good to start a new it’s good to, you know, get back. And I think it’s good to close something a chapter a year and then start a new one. And this is how I’ve always approached this. And I haven’t been stressing about it much, but I do like, I enjoy the closure of the year and I enjoy, well, yes, I do enjoy also planning of the new year and like kind of aspiring to a better me, to a better year, to better things. - So this is this kind of ritual for you? Oh, completely. Yes. I always basically the whole January for me is kind of this month of reflection and preparing for the new year. Also, in the meantime, I do have to do things I have to do, like I have to record this podcast and I have to, you know, be the CEO of Nozbe and also get us ready for our 18th celebration of Nozbe in the next month. So I do have to work on the normal things but I do enjoy reflecting on and closing the last year and preparing the new year. I think maybe it depends on the type of person you are or like personality or your construct psychological construction because I don’t know from my experience I see that my approach like we’re following and going when you really feel something and when you find something and then you fall in love with it, it works better for me. But that’s probably how I am. It’s difficult for me to sit down, imagine, plan, do everything theoretically and really focus and go deep inside myself. I’m going to work on it. I’m going to share it with you later on. But for example, last year, I said to myself that, wow, I’m getting older, but I still would like to have one more degree and experience again, being a student. And I just went on the internet. I found the uni that I was interested in. It’s not far from my home. And then I found the, you know, like the profile and just signed up. And now I’m doing that. And I’m doing great. And I’m a very good student. So it worked for me this way, not planning. Okay, next year, I’m going to do my extra degree. No, I just, it was a spur of a moment. Now you’re a student, like back, you know, like, you just, like, young again. Yes, it’s great. And good day, Robert. Also, here’s among listeners today. So, um, yeah, for, for, I remember one of the authors of, of, of, one of the best selling authors, he said, I don’t remember who it was, but I remember his quote that he always, He only writes when he’s inspired. Luckily, the inspiration strikes every day at 9 a .m. (both laughing) Which means basically he has a routine to write. And for him, just the act of writing inspires him to write better. And I am kind of the same way. That’s why, for example, I am this kind of person that I prefer in the morning to do smaller tasks, to get going, to give some feedback, to do smaller things, so that when I’m warmed up, then I can tackle the big rocks, the big, I can eat the big frog in the middle of the day when I’m warmed up, when I’m ready for more action. And it’s the same thing with the New Year’s resolutions and New Year planning and New Year reflection. I prefer to do this whole process of closing out the last year so that I can see what I should focus on next year, what I should drop and how I should act. Everyone prefers a different way, but it’s good when it works for you. The second point I wanted to touch in some theory and there are different words like resolutions, goals, changes, projects. I think like resolutions, it’s a little bit aggressive word and it indicates that there’s maybe some… We are imposing something on ourselves. With resolutions, we try to satisfy this part of self, like the super ego is something that is the image of ourselves that is created by by the external world world. So I think like resolutions associate to me to doing something that’s expected from us, or that maybe we are guilty into, or that we are just, you know, like this to quiet the nagging voice of conscious, something from the outside. But when I think of a change or improvement or even growth, it sounds better. - I also like presently the word iteration, which means like it’s a new version iteration. Like, you know, like with Nozbe, we have new version coming to our customers every week or every other week. So every, or every two weeks, there is an iteration. There’s always a better version, always improved version. - Yeah, okay, like the next step. - Exactly, so it’s like, not new year, new me, it’s more like new year improved me. And I think we should all focus on improving ourselves really for ourselves. Like as you said, we shouldn’t look at others and what others are expecting of us, but what we are expecting of us. It’s like when you, I mean, I like sports as you know, I like triathlons and but I’m an amateur triathlete I’m not gonna be a world champion or a Olympic champion anymore too late. I’m sorry for that but not too late to do the sports and You always compete with yourself basically So when you’re amateur like the idea is that you compete with yourself You can’t you try to be better at doing something and also when you’re a true amateur sports person, you try to have more fun each time. It’s like, you know, you try to enjoy it more. It’s like with me playing tennis, you know, and I started a few years back. Now I’m good enough so that people who have played their entire life, tennis, they, when they play me, they still win, but they really have to sweat to get it. So, um, and I enjoy it. I enjoy playing against them. I enjoy being challenged and I, challenge. And I’m just having fun. And this is, for me, the, you know, the improved version. Yeah, I think we have, we all have enough of duties and commitment. So it’s not worth making your plans or goals another duty. It should be kind of fun and something pleasant. Also, something I discovered about myself is that I am not that competitive, I think. You know, I think that’s why it’s good. That’s why it’s good. I’m not the CEO of a big Fortune 500 company ‘cause then I would have to be really competitive. And by being a CEO of a small company, I like to, you know, do what I do. I like enjoying what I do. I also, I’m an achiever, so I like to achieve I see many, many, many, many of my friends who are just much more competitive when we play tennis or we ride bikes or whatever they are like, and I’m like, you have the distance. Yes. Also, like another idea of getting these New Year’s things, goals, changes, resolutions is I think Mark Manson, he follows this idea. It’s not goal. It’s not a project, it’s theme. So every year has a theme for them, like, I don’t know, like a theme of something. It’s also a nice approach because then you can also engage other people to follow this theme and work on something related to this topic or theme with you. I think it’s more like less, less pressure, less stress, maybe if you go for a theme. Yeah, I mean, I have seen that approach and some people like having a theme for a year like a new theme, or I remember Chris Brogan, there’s something like, you know, three words for next year. So like these three words are the theme for them, you know. Okay, so he thinks up words. Yeah, three words, three distinct words, like, for example, let’s say, love, commitment, improvement, let’s say, right. And then this is what it but it’s like his guiding force, like these three words. - Okay, so it’s nothing concrete. It’s more like abstract words. - As you said, it’s like a theme. It’s like also a theme building thing, you know? Like these three words construct like the most important, you know, again, the theme for next year. So some people do that. And I have tried, I think a few years back, do that as well. But in the end, for me, that the theme, I don’t know, not structured enough. No, no, no. I prefer to have like more, you know, more projects, tasks and comments approach, more projects, more goals, something like that. But also, as we mentioned, not to stress about it, so like the journey is the ultimate destination. So like the improved version of me, you know, even if I don’t achieve some goal, if I have moved forward, it’s already for me, I win.
- Okay, now I was thinking, which resolutions or goals we usually don’t manage to implement. And when I was thinking about it, I found out that they are mostly the staff that is not aligned with ourselves. It’s not ours. It’s not aligned with our values or something that we are really into, that we don’t have thrills when we think of it. That might be this, because if we take something from outside, as we said before, something that is imposed on us or something that we think we should do, then the motivation and the whole psychological aspect of introducing this change can be really like weekend. So I think that if something is really mine, it will be much easier to implement and to introduce and to work on and to make effort on. I’m going to say something very deep right now. So watch out. Know yourself. So really, you have to know yourself, really. And sometimes it’s always like people say, don’t do what I say, do what I do, right? So look at your actions. That’s why we’ll go to the next step now, the review of last year. It’s so important to me. It’s important to me to review last year because then, only then, I see what I’ve really done, why some things I haven’t achieved well, why some things I did do or which things were fun and which were not. Because this way, you can know yourself and you can, you know, your actions speak louder than words. And, and, you know, you can keep telling yourself, I want to do this, you know, I want to, I don’t know, run a marathon on while you hate running you know or I should do this I should run a marathon you know it’s like my favorite part is like I’m 42 so 42 is 42 kilometers of marathon I have to do a marathon today this year you know I’m not 42 I’m 45 but like you know people who are 42 do very often do that you know they associate this number and now that’s me I have to run marathon this year then no you don’t have to do anything mark the really Not especially with your knee, you shouldn’t, but this is the thing. People are forcing themselves to do something because, you know, and then they see that they’re not doing it, that they’re reluctant to do it, or they avoid doing something. And then that’s why it’s really important to know yourself, to really, you know, reflect on last year. Yeah, and the worst idea is to take that project that we couldn’t tackle last year and automatically put it on this year’s list. This is like 100 % failure because you didn’t even reflect on why you didn’t start working on it, why you avoided this topic. Apparently there must have been something that stopped you and if you don’t reflect and just move it to your this year’s list, surely you will just suffer and you will be disappointed with yourself. So don’t do it if you have projects that you didn’t manage to start even or you started but you were really relaxed with it, then it’s worth going into this project or goal and finding out why. Isn’t it yours? What was wrong with it? - Completely. No, that’s why, you know, it’s okay not to copy paste something. It’s okay to decide, okay, I haven’t accomplished that last year and I’m not gonna, I’m out. I’m like, you know, the more I’m right now, you know, middle -aged man, I start to understand that one of the freedoms that we have, and you know, one of our values in Nozbe’s freedom, is that you can always walk away. So if somebody wants to insult you, you can just walk away. I’m not gonna take it like bye bye. And also, with the tasks, you know, you impose something on yourself, you wanted to do something, it didn’t happen. Decide again, like, you can be honest with yourself, be honest with yourself and decide again, Do I really want to do it? You know, it’s like it’s like with With Marie Kondo and Joy No Joy, right? Does it bring you joy? That’s not bring you joy like or like if you if I were to choose it again today with all everything I know would I choose it again? You know, would I want to do this this again? Would I want to accomplish this again? Or maybe I want to do something else And also, in the same aspect, is the question of trade-offs. If you want to do different things, more things, or if you’re curious about something else, well, something has to go. There are trade-offs. So that’s why I give you all, our listeners, I give you all my blessing to just abandon things from last year. Like, you’re OK. You’re going to be fine. And that’s why, for example, in Nozbe, in the app, I remember, we insisted that we, in the new Nozbe, we introduced the action to abandon a task. Yeah, not complete, not delete, but just abandon. No, abandoned. Like, it’s, you know, it’s abandoned. Like, you know, you don’t want to do it. It’s fine. It’s registered in the system. There was an attempt. But for some reason, we decided to abandon it and we’re done. If you want to get back to it, you can find it. Yeah, maybe one day you can come back to this, but you don’t have to. Exactly. You can find it in brilliant Nozbe search. You can find this old task and maybe pick it up again. But for now, you’re abandoning it and it’s done. Yeah, if you forced yourself to do things that are not aligned with you and that you are not into, then you will be just disappointed and you will waste a lot of time and a lot of energy for instead of putting it somewhere when when it could work so yeah don’t don’t don’t be afraid to abandon things to change things if you already have a plan then as a time goes don’t be afraid to modify it be elastic you don’t your plan doesn’t have to be so hermetic and so concrete, you can also always change the direction a little bit. Yeah, like, I’m not a goal person, as I said, I’m more into directions. And if one direction isn’t so perfect, then I can go left or go right a little bit, or have a plan B or plan C, just not to be disappointed that this is what I’m really afraid of, that if I don’t do something, then I will be disappointed and my self -esteem will go down. So, yeah, I think this is the good approach and to be okay with it. - Yeah, completely. So, The way I review last year, you can see my early reviews. I publish them transparently on my website at https://michael.team/year
So you can go there to see all my early reviews. I’ve done that for the last, I don’t know, 10 or more years. And when I start, I start with the calendar actually. I reviewed the calendar from last year, like all the events that happened, everything that happened. And I write down how I felt about it, or if I had a new idea or what I felt about it. So this is kind of my reflecting on last year. Also, to remind myself how many people– - But these are like work events or your personal events? - The whole calendar, the whole me, the whole me. And I love it, ‘cause it’s like I go through all the events. Also, If I go through a month and I haven’t read my journal from that month because I saw journal as you know, I had a journaling up shortcut. So I also read the journal entries from that month. And then this way I go month by month and have my notes based on that. And this way, I get kind of, I have the whole year in a nutshell really. So this is what I do. I reflect on that. And also, I look at my statistics and some of the stats, like how many kilometers I did on the cycle, on the bicycle, on how much running did I do or all that stuff. So I review also my stats. Also, I check my business stats and stuff. But as I mentioned, I mentioned. The statistics more or less I know because I’m reviewing them basically every week when I do my weekly review, but it’s good to just go back to read about your whole year to just again think about the themes that happened, things that happened and how you felt and how I felt, what I did, what I didn’t do. But And also appreciate the year that I’ve had, even though, for example, last year was pretty tough for me, but in the end, it worked out pretty fine and I’m really happy about it. But again, the ups and downs, this is how our journey goes. And do you use this method with the circle of life, that you have a circle and every piece of this circle is an aspect of your life, like personal personal life, work, development, money, family, friends, or something like this, or you don’t have this method? Not really. I have certain roles. I have a role of being the CEO of this company. I have a role of being a father and a husband. I have a role of sports person. Okay, so what you sit down and you and you analyze yourself. Yeah, what I did in these roles, you know. Also, I like traveling, so as a traveler, I also see, you know, where I went, you know, what I saw. And also, you know, also, I decided this year to publish, for example, how many books I read. I have a spoiler, not many, 14, but still 14 books. And also as a reader, I also do that and check how many books I wanna read next year, what I wanna read and all that stuff. So these roles come naturally, I mean, just naturally come out of my calendar and out of my, and I know that some people are like analyzing these roles more, like should I be more dad, like what I can do better as a dad or better as the CEO and everything. And I think I kind of do a similar thing in that sense that I really always reflect on that. Like, have I done enough or have I done enough for a good job in this role? Or is there something, is there something I should do better or I would like to do better in that role? I’m jealous that you can keep this structure and follow this year, new year review, no, past year review, so nicely. I have problems with sitting down and devoting quite a lot of time to reflecting on myself on how can I improve or what did I wrong, what I did well. Probably that will be one of my goals or directions this year to be able to spend more time on improving myself theoretically, on reflecting, on thinking. Also, I think writing will help me a lot because probably writing on some topics would, I don’t know, maybe make me to go even deeper and to reflect more thoroughly. But I remember like I’m experimenting and I use different methods every year, practically. But I really like this, the idea with this circle of life thing, because then you have these aspects, and you can reflect on how you did in those aspects roles, I think it’s really something similar. And then you choose several aspects on which you would like to focus the most in the new year. And you set yourself some goals or some directions specifically in those aspects. I think it’s a nice structure and nice help, a good help when you don’t know how to start and you are not like myself, a project person, goal person, and someone who notes down progress, statistics and stuff. I’m more of a doer. So it’s hard for me to sit down and reflect and analyze a lot. But this method, it’s really useful and helpful. Yeah, so what what else, what else you do to summarize your year and be able to set goals or directions for the new year? I mean, you know, I also did something very cool this year with my family is that we have have sat down and we sat down and we went through our photos from last year. And I like doing that and I encourage everyone to do that, like, like have an evening, you know, instead of a movie night, like have a photo night, you know, and just go through the photos because we take so many pictures now, like the little pictures are free, so you just take pictures or everything. So, so it’s great to do that. And what we do additionally, which I really recommend is later, we choose our best photos. And from these best photos, we choose the 12 photos that will go into our calendar for next year. And we order online like a printed calendar, a wall calendar with our 12 favorite photos. And it’s glorious. Like we love this calendar. It’s on our fridge in our kitchen. And we always like, you know, we see this picture like for the whole month, you know, the picture of us being somewhere or doing something cool, something nice. we try to choose, you know, different places, we try to choose different people we’re with, you know, sometimes it’s the whole family, sometimes it’s the family with some other people, with, you know, with a bigger family or with friends, or sometimes it’s not the entire family, but, you know, some of us with some, you know, it depends. But we just try to choose the 12 coolest photos, which is really hard. But, you like, I mean, you know, again, it’s for you. Like, there’s no stress about it later or not a word is like, so I really encourage to do that. Everyone and people who come to our house when they see the calendar, because again, it’s in the kitchen, it’s on the fridge. And they’re like, ah, this is so cool. This is so nice. And but yeah, but we do it completely for ourselves. It’s, it’s always fun. So again, one of this is also a part of me reflecting last year, especially, you know, seeing the travels we’ve done, you know, the things we’ve done together as a family or as me. I mean, you know, it’s great. So another tip for you. Yeah, my daughter has like every year she receives an album like that from her grandma. So like every year she has the photos of print it out. Because it’s true, you are totally right. Like, before, when we were supposed to develop and print out the photos, you had those albums. And then when there was a boring family meeting, and there was no topic to discuss, then you said, Oh, maybe we can watch photos. And then there was this album that was placed on the table, and everyone was watching. And it was kind of physical. And now, when you have your photos all the time with you and you can take a look on Facebook or Instagram, that this magic disappeared. But with the physical album, so like diaries like that with your photos and histories printed out, it’s cool. Another tip or a game or, I don’t know, a game is what I did because, Okay, after your yearly review, you are supposed to plan. And how do you usually plan? When you are a person like Michael, like a structured person, goal person, then what you do is probably you visual, visualize yourself in five years, or you can see your like long term goals, probably easily. In my case, I don’t know, probably it’s, I don’t know, it stems from my psychological problems or uncertainty or anxiety, but I can’t. I can’t be brave enough to imagine myself in what I could be in 10 years. So I can’t do those goals, long -term goals. I don’t dare to do this. But what I did with my family lately is we said, okay, let’s take a piece of paper and let’s think we are totally rich. We have unlimited resources, unlimited money, unlimited power, unlimited everything and just list the things that you would like, that you would like to do, that you would like to own, that you would like to be and just write them down. Don’t worry, be crazy, let as you fly and just, and I did it. And then after reading this list several times, I said that, like, I saw that some of those points, those crazy points could really be those long term goals, because I dared to, to do something like to be to visualize, visualize myself somewhere. So for people shy or disturbed like me, this is a great game. And to prepare yourself for setting goals or setting the directions for the new year. - I think it’s a great idea. I think an idea where you can ask your family, like, what would you want to do if the resources, if the money was not an issue? Like, what would you want to do? What would you want to see, who would you want to meet? Like, my eight year old, she would like to go to LA and meet all the YouTubers that she likes. So yeah, so that’s what she would want to do. But anyway, this is really cool. This is what I do, for example, because one of my planning is that after after January, like, at the end of January, beginning of February, I take my wife on a date weekend, where we just go two of us to plan our year, which basically means we review our plans. By that time, I would have done the yearly planning for myself. And this way, we can talk about it. I can talk about my plans and she can talk about her plans. And the best part about this is that when you start asking questions like why this, why that, like you start discovering that even the person that you know so well has some hidden ideas or some hidden wants or needs that she or he didn’t express before. Or they grew to some new level. Yes, exactly. So this way you discover new things and and and I remember like you know one year it was my wife wanted to learn French so it was like we talked about it and I was I was curious about why she would want to do that and then you know what was her motivation behind it so anyway it was it’s always fun to to ask about it so I think this kind of thing you know that whatever you like you whatever you want to do Tell me, and let’s listen and let’s talk about it, because as you said, some of the crazy ideas can be done, you know, can be implemented. So maybe they’re not that expensive when you think about it or we do it, do them a little bit differently. So it’s good to, you know, to let our fantasy fly away. Just the crazy idea can be a tip, something that You can reshape to something more realistic, but that is totally yours and that is aligned with your Your dreams or your plans or your yourself completely another Rule that we should follow is being honest with ourselves and going deep Into reflection out of reflection. So if you want to change something in your life, you need to get to know yourself better and reach your hidden subconscious intentions or internal conflicts, because very often it is like that. I think there is a blog post on it in English as well, written by a psychotherapist, that if you want to introduce a change in your life, you have to expect that there will be a conflict of at least two forces fighting with each other. And usually we are aware of one of those things, because this is something that we can see because we are aware of that. But there is something hidden, very often there is something hidden that won’t let us to proceed with the change or with the direction that we took. So it’s very important to, Yes, some people go to psychotherapy, but if someone is good in autoreflection, they can just deal with that problem themselves and find what is stopping them from doing something or what is it that stops you or slows you down in certain things? My friend and mentor Michael Hyatt, he has this course, “Your Best Year Ever” and a book, “Your Best Year Ever”, which I really you know, one of the steps to making the yearly, you know, reflection is to find your limiting beliefs. Because sometimes you have these limiting beliefs that hold you down, that hold you, you know, like, I will never be able to do this, or I will never be, you know, good enough in this, or I will never achieve that. And of course, like as I mentioned, I will never be a professional tennis player. That’s true. But it doesn’t, true, but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying tennis, right? So it’s, you know, find the limiting beliefs and see what you do, what you can do. And that’s why it’s important to realize that there are things that are holding you back which are only in your head. Mm -hmm, that’s true. Okay, Now, we have five ideas, or maybe we should do some small break. Yeah, let’s take a break with our sponsor. And our sponsor, of course, is Nozbe, our favorite application, which is great for projects, tasks, and for goals, for setting up goals. And here, Robert is saying that his strategy is to favorite projects that he would like to focus for a month, we’ll get back to his ideas, to Robert’s ideas after the break. And let’s see who can say something good about our application. - Some sort of project management software that can help me have a set of really trusted services.
- JJ Robertson, I’m on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am a holistic health coach focusing on weight loss and fat loss. And I’ve used Nozbe every day, my personal life, and in my business life. So Nozbe really helped me out with organizing my life and keeping me focused. And in the past, I’ve, with different businesses, I’ve used everything Trello, Asana, you know, all the major getting organized things. And I’ve always come back to Nozbe from my own personal use whenever I had a chance. I’ve always introduced Nozbe to different businesses because it just works. It just works. Nozbe just works. We’ve been doing this for the last 18 years almost. So we’re about to celebrate 18th anniversary of Nozbe. So there must be something to it. There must be more Roberts out there. J .J. Robertson. - And really, Nozbe is really a practical goal for working with our goals and directions. It’s really easy to create a project. And then if you already have ideas and steps that you think that you should take, then list those steps as tasks. Then you can give some tasks priority, Some not then you can set some dates, but you don’t have to you can obviously set recurrence because when you want to bring up some red ritual or or a change will probably have to repeat things persistently so yeah recurrent every week every day every two. Every every second Thursday, whatever you wish, Then it’s really nice to create a task that will encourage you to follow the progress. Yes, so maybe every week when you do your weekly review, or every month if you don’t want to be so intense with that, create a task, check the progress. Then you can go back to your goals, see how you are doing, maybe there’s something you want to change, adjust, maybe you want to abandon something, maybe you want, I don’t know, you know, to be a little bit less intense or maybe to intensify something, it’s really worth to have a tool, a little helper, a virtual assistant that will help you out with your goals and with your, with the changes that you want to introduce. Exactly. And this is,
- Exactly, and this is why in the end, like after all this reflection, everything I do then create projects for the things I wanna achieve in the next year.
- Okay, so when you plan your year, please first, don’t rise the bar too high. Start with achievable know, don’t be too harsh with yourself. Start small. And then you will be able to go further if you can. But if you start with something really, really complicated, you’ll be demotivated. And there is a big chance that you will fail. Because if you, I don’t know, if you say, okay, I will be doing this every day, while you are not able to do this once a week, then it’s 100 % failure. Oh man, I have so many friends, especially again, getting back to sports. I have so many friends who are like overdoing it, like somebody is barely running and they already set the goal to do a marathon, right? So it’s like, it’s too much. One And he decided to, you know, be more fit. So he signed up for CrossFit. And he started doing CrossFit four times a week. And I’m like, man, this is not sustainable. No, no, it’s fine. Four times a week, I’m going to be strong. And of course, after like, you know, three, four weeks it was done. Like he was exhausted and it wasn’t sustainable. - He didn’t have time for anything else.
- Exactly, Exactly. And I remember, so to give you an idea, I remember when I started running back in 2012, so like many years ago, I started running. I started running because my neighbor who was a runner or like more advanced runner than me, he asked me if I wanted to run with him. So we decided to run and I think I told the story on the podcast already. We decided to run every Wednesday at 9 o ‘clock. So every Wednesday, just once a week, once, once, once a week, every Wednesday at nine o ‘clock. So whatever the weather was or whatever happened in my life, I had to make sure that every Wednesday at nine o ‘clock, I was ready to run because, you know, he was like, we agreed on this, right? So it was just once a week. So just think about it, that after this run, I felt great. Like I was making progress, I was running, it was great. And then If I happened to have a moment and some, you know, inspiration to run on Friday, it was like a bonus. It was like, whoa, I did two runs this week. I’m great. Like, you know, I wasn’t, you know, this, just this once, like this once, running once a week was a very low bar. But, you know, try running once a week. You know, the consistency already helps you achieve a bigger consistency later. And again, you have to imagine how it felt to do any other run. It was like, it felt like a bonus. It felt like I won the life, you know? It felt so great to be able to do one additional run or maybe sometimes in some weeks I did two additional runs. It was like, wow, I’m an overachiever right now, you know? So really setting, you know, setting this bar lower is not setting yourself up for failure. It’s setting yourself up to be able to succeed and to jump higher later. Yeah, iterations as you said at the beginning. Yes, iteration, exactly. The second point I would like to mention is that we need to remember that good habits are like they give less satisfaction at the beginning. They are not so cool. And so, you know, like here and now it’s cool. No, but yeah, they give you a lot. But in the long term, bad habits are tricky. They usually give us satisfaction here and now. That’s why we get into them. But then in long term, they are counter productive or against our health or against us so let’s let’s remember about it Yeah, the basic idea is like when you have sweets like you eat sweets. It’s it’s fantastic. The sweets are so good But yeah, then your body is not really responding to them very well But if you have to go to the gym, you know, it’s annoying you have to go there But in the long you’re going to be fit. So it’s great. Yeah. So yeah, and the world now is like this, the culture, everything is like this, that it offers us immediate gratification. We really are not able to be patient and to wait for this gratification. So we should try, remember about it, to have it in our mind that bad habits are tricky. And they, This is a trap. Don’t go that way. Third point is kind of similar to our first point. Let’s not plan for too many changes at once. If we decide to learn French, then have Brazilian bodox, and then get to know new programming language, and, I don’t know, run a marathon, then we will probably fail because it’s too much. We are not superheroes. We can focus on one thing. Yeah, probably your favorite book, Essentialism, would confirm that. But yeah, let’s start with one. And once this habit, this ritual, this change will become a little bit automatic for us, we will do it more like easily, then we can start with the second part or the second item. I mean, our friend of the podcast, Derek Severs, he wrote somewhere that if you want to be a master in something, you need a decade of practicing it. But if you stuck up the decades, you can be master in, you know, five, six, seven things, you know, if you live long enough. Because we as humans, you know, overestimate what we can do in a year, but underestimate what we can do in a decade. But I think it’s a good reminder that also throughout the year, if you have these five, six, seven goals that you want to do, maybe, just like Robert here suggested, you prepare these projects, prepare tasks there in Nozbe, but then you favor it right now, the projects that you want to focus on this month. And then these are the ones that you see every day and then you focus on these ones. And then once you get the hang of it, once you have the habits in place and once everything is working there, or maybe once you have achieved some of the things, then you add another one, you know, later down the lane. Like it’s 12 months, man. Like the year is long. So I think people make this mistake of rushing in and trying to do like all these goals, like, you know, Chuck Norris, like how many goals do you want to do? All of them. So don’t be like Chuck Norris and try to do them one by one, you know. And don’t focus on effort and on this discipline and sacrifices that are supposed to lead you to your goal. Instead, it’s better to create a system that will make it easier to reach the goal or get a tool that will make your goal more accessible or get a skill set, get some knowledge that will make the goal more easier and faster to achieve. Right? Completely. Like I mentioned, I think on this podcast already that When I set a goal to run a certain number of kilometers in a year, I looked at my calendar and I realized, okay, for example, when I bring my daughter to this practice and I have to wait for her, in the meantime, I can just go for a run. And then I come back from the run, she has done the practice, we can go home. So if I do this twice a week, this means I will have run that that many kilometers. Now, we do something really special and I’m really proud of it. On Tuesdays, I bring my youngest to a gymnastics practice with my middle daughter and with the middle daughter, we run together. And yesterday, both of my daughters were very tired after school because it was their first day of school after the holidays and everything. And they didn’t want to go. And I said, no, no, no girls. We do sports. This is what we do. And we have planned this. In our calendar, on Tuesdays, we do this. And I promise you, you will feel great about it. And of course, they didn’t believe me. But we went out. First, the little one, she didn’t really want to go of the gymnastics class. She was begging me not to go. But then she went. And then with the middle one, she didn’t feel like running. So in the beginning, we started walking. And then after a walk, she was like, Oh, daddy, actually, I can run now. So we started running, you know, and it was fun. And then we came back to pick up the little one from the gymnastics practice. And she was like, Daddy, it was so cool. And I was like, Yeah, you see, like, because the, you know, the best drug ever, the endorphins after you have done sport, they come later, you know, you have to earn them. So, and I, the only regret is that I haven’t recorded her, you know, to have a video of her saying, I didn’t want to go, but I went and it was great because then I can show this, I would be able to show this video to her like in the future when she is like not up to speed. But that’s the thing. These, you You know, this way we have a structure and this way we can do this together. And we have also this kind of social support, we all do this. Like we depend on each other. Like we have to, I have to bring one to the practice and we have to do the running with the other one. Yeah, so I mentioned that we can get a tool that would make it easier. Recently, I wanted to read more and I found an application where you have e -books and audio books in one app. And then I, let’s say I was reading an e -book and then I got tired or okay, I went to sleep. And then in the morning when I was walking my dog, I wanted to continue, but obviously you shouldn’t be reading books while walking. So then I just opened the app And I said, listen, and the app asks me, do you want to continue when you finished reading last night? And I said, I just said yes. And it adjusts the moment of the book when I stopped reading. So I didn’t know the tool like that. And I was so excited about it. And thanks to that, I read like many, many, many books last year. So, a tool, a simple tool. Yeah, completely. Like, we always say that, you know, the idea is to lower the buyer of entry. So you have to prepare a system that makes, as Greg McKeown would say, execution a fortless. Like, it’s what to do to improve the situation so that next time when you do it, it’s easier for you. Like, this you. The same we do here with this podcast. We have talked about it that we have a template for a project for this podcast and we have these tasks and we keep iterating on the template. We keep changing the template after basically each recording to make sure that it’s even easier for us. It’s really effortless for us to create a new episode, to plan the new episode, to record the episode. I just came up with some improvements for our video guy Paweł, what we can do later in post -production, so we keep improving, iterating as I mentioned, but also we keep making it easier on ourselves to be able to deliver a quality podcast for all of you, while not, you know, stressing about it and not thinking, oh, now I have to do all this and all that, before I even record the podcast, you know, Because actually the recording of podcasts is the most fun, but all the tasks that you have to do before that and after that, they are like so many things. So we keep trying to streamline this. And I think in everything you’re doing, like in the habits you create, you begin to work on these systems, like it’s the same. You know, if you have your running shoes ready for you, it will be easier for you to run. If your bike is always ready, you will be cycling more. But if your bike is in the basement hidden behind something, you’re like, “I have to take out my bike now.” So, you will just give up before you even start. Okay, So what? I think we said everything that we planned. Completely. And again, having these systems and iterating on these systems will help you achieve your goals this year. Don’t stress about it. Not only achieve, but also enjoy the process. Yes, because I think sometimes it’s better to enjoy the process and just doing and striving than to be happy with the defect.
- And remember, like the journey is the ultimate destination. Like it’s, the journey is the thing, you know? Again, I can’t stress enough. I’m so grateful that for the last 18 years, almost, I have been doing this, I have been doing Nozbe, I have been helping others get organized. And it’s still fun for me. It’s still exciting for me. And this way, I think we are doing it better. We’re doing it, like it’s, you know, joy is really important. So, and get, and as I mentioned, getting to know yourself. So really, do I encourage you to reflect on past year and prepare this year a little bit. We in Nozbe, we on Fridays, On Fridays, we have our free day where we do the weekly review and focus on personal development. In January, I will focus on Fridays to complete my yearly review, to be able to publish it on my blog, but also for myself, again, to get to know me better in the next year. Yeah, so thank you guys. Treat yourself fairly and well, let go, don’t be afraid to abandon things, appreciate the effort and enjoy the process. And yeah, just we hope that 2025 will be great for you. Have a great one. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the NoOffice podcast. Every other Wednesday we meet to talk about productivity and hybrid lifestyle, because we believe that work is not a place to go. It’s a thing to do. It’s a special gift only to No Office podcast listeners. When you sign up for Nozbe using this link, https://nozbe.com/podcast, you’ll get 30 bucks of credits, which you can use to upgrade to Nozbe Premium. Nozbe helps thousands of smart business owners and their teams get their professional and private life organized in a single app in a simple way. And Nozbe is free for up to three active projects and three people on your team. So start today and claim your free bonus credits, which you will later need to upgrade to unlimited projects. Once again, thank you for being an amazing listener. Thanks for your support and for spreading the word about our No Office podcast and Nozbe. See you and hear you in the next episode and in the meantime, claim your bonus credits here.
