One of my teachers used to remind us “You don’t want to eat every meal you’ll ever eat, today.”

It’s easy during a New Years Resolution rush to feel like we have limited amounts of time to get Big things done, so that we can start Living the Good Life.

But if you’ve ever eaten too much at a holiday meal, you know that it’s uncomfortable trying to cram in more than you’re ready for, even if it’s food you like.

For most of us, we’re trying to cram in activities we don’t like, in order to get results we want.

But if you can take food you love and make it uncomfortable by having too much of it, imagine how much you can torture yourself by craming yourself full of activities you don’t care for.

You can overdo this. You could push too hard up front and try to consume all of 2020 in one big bite.

Instead, what I’m suggesting, and what these emails are about, is take smaller bites this year. If you don’t let your goals fall by the wayside, there’s less reason to even take big bites; and this year you have weekly reminders for every week of the year, so it’ll be hard to forget about your goals if they slip.

If you do skip a few days or start to fall behind on your goals, don’t try to make up for it by cramming in multiple days’ worth of work into some fired up “catch-up day.”

Don’t get fired up...

Just pick it back up.

Take the next step.

Gentle-style.

It would be better, for the long run, to start again today, and take small, but appropriately sized steps, and make that your habit for 2020, than to make a habit of cramming and getting worn out.

Just a small step. Total forgiveness for any days or milestones you missed. Live today like it’s January 1st and that you have no score to take yet because you’re just starting out.

If it ever gets too big-feeling like you’re maybe trying to eat 50 meals today, just:

1. Pause
2. You don’t have to close your eyes, or take a deep breath, people just recommend those to help you interrupt your momentum
3. Realize that likely you can’t do much today except the next-step
4. Make that not-suck

Unless it’s a movie, one day is never enough to change the world or change your life.

Change is a bunch of unimpressive looking little days where we say “eh... okay I could do the next bit.”

So ratchet back the score-keeping until you feel like you’re being reasonable about your expectations for yourself.

It’s better to practice this right, meaning practice calmly taking the next step, than big spikes of cramming activity and then experiencing… whatever the New Year’s Resolution equivalent of puking is...

Don’t make yourself sick over anything you’re doing this year. Because you’ll just encode that sick feeling into the habit and make it even scarier to take the steps needed to fulfil your goal.

One of the worst things we can do, is panic when we fell behind, and have that encode on the experience as the emotion we should associate with our goal -and then compound that with furiously trying to make up for the lost time, and stacking that second helping of bad emotion on top of it.

You picked this goal because you wanted to be a slightly different version of yourself, one who could reliably do whatever it is you picked to do.

When you were picturing this year’s goal, you almost certainly were not planning on having to cram 50 days worth of work in a single all-nighter.

Daydreams about resolutions are more often along the lines of, “oh wow, look how capable I’ll feel. I want that; I wanna be that person.”

A capable person is well paced; not rushed.

I don’t think anyone picked out for 2020, “I hope I constantly feel like I’m running out of time.”

Or something like, “I hope 2020 kicks my butt in a way that I always feel like I’m behind.”

-No; right? Nobody got on this list because they were planning for 2020 to feel awful.

The plan is, to do work, modestly but consistently, so that we evolve ourselves imperceptibly into a person we like being on Dec 31st. No regrets; that’s what a lot of us Resolve to have a year from now. We want to make progress on our goals so they’re not a badge of shame.

So start now; practice encoding the sensation of just doing the work and having no regrets:

That is to say, let go of any regrets you have about the year so far.

Start that now, so that it’s normal and well practiced by the time December 31st comes around.

Having regrets is only useful for trying to gobble down more progress in a day than there’s room for ...and then ultimately passing out from cramming.

Just take the next step; yeah it probably won’t be thrilling. And the fact that we’re not making a big deal out of it takes all the thrill of the chase out of it.

But think of how grown-up it’s going to feel; like how you expected to feel by the time you were this age-- didn’t you? Didn’t we all think that by this age we’d just be really reliable for ourselves? Didn’t we dream of all the things we’d accomplish calmly and cool headed when we were older?

That’s the training this year.

2020 is the year of Reliable, not the year of cramming.

So go take whatever the next bite-sized bite is out of your 2020 goal, be sure to chew; don’t gulp.

And digest it: Patiently.

Let the work do its thing.

PS. 1. Don’t be afraid to go back and re-read earlier emails that really connected with you or...

2. Don’t forget to be on the lookout for other voices than just these emails to keep you encouraged this year; 2020 resolutions pursued alone sounds much more boring and much more of a cram-waiting-to-happen, than just finding either someone to Buddy System with you for 2020, or books/youtube/podcasts that reinforce the notion of the person you’re developing yourself to be.

3. As requested, this is the link to sign up for this challenge, in case you’re trying to tell somebody about these emails and want an easy way to get them included. They can go to this link, fill in their email address, and then they just have to click the thing in the confirmation email that lets the program know they signed up on purpose; they’ve gotta click that button in the confirmation email, or no weekly emails show up. You can forward this email to them and just tell them to scroll down to the end and look for the sign up link here: https://noah-wizard.ck.page/4e58210171

Your Next Email will arrive on ooh looks like February 3rd;

Month 2 of 2020; don’t let that panic you; February loves to freak people out.

Wanna triumph over the February Freak Out? Just remember that most change is slow going and spotty at the beginning and that most of us won’t notice the progress we made until like October, and it’s not October yet so calm down; chances are good you’re changing your brain with new ideas that are changing your tendencies in line with the person who has the habits you’re hoping to have. If February gets here and you're not where you thought you'd be, that's fine, it's the beginning still. Nobody remembers February by the time December rolls around; the only thing they remember is whether they let February eat them alive or not, so don't let that happen; just do the work, small bits, next step, humble style.