I’m not one for making resolutions but I do take a few moments at the start of each year to remind myself of the things I’ve committed to trying to do each day (learn something new, lead a life to be followed, live like there is no tomorrow, & love extravagantly) and determine if there are any new commitments I want to establish for the coming year. Perhaps these are the same things as resolutions, but they strike me as ongoing givens rather than some new striving I am trying on for the first few months of the new year.
You see and hear a lot of posts, stories, memes, and advice around how to start and maintain habits this time of year. There is a recent popular book, Atomic Habits, I have on my “to be read” list that reportedly breaks down the science and provides evidenced based strategies for starting and maintaining new habits. I’m curious about the book and may get to it this year but I not resolving to get to it.
I don’t know if the book talks about leveraging technology or not, but technology seems to be a commonly used tool now to help us establish resolutions and/or set goals at the start of a new year. There are three apps on my phone that have been hounding me to set new goals for the new year.
Fitbit is pushing me to set metrics around my weight, my activity, and my sleep. It also talks to me about cardio load, active zone minutes, and readiness scores but I have to draw a line somewhere. Lose It is suggesting that I need to establish weight loss and nutritional targets while Goodreads is eager to know how many books I plan on reading this year. I suspect there are other apps seeking similar goal setting targets from me, but I have notifications for most of my apps turned off.
For those of you who are curious, I set my 2025 goals at the following: 158 pounds target weight, 6,000 steps per day, 7 hours of sleep per night, 36 books read, 2200 calories per day, and 100 grams of protein per day.
Despite setting these goals and feeling good about my desired outcomes for the upcoming year, I can’t help but have a thought in the back of my mind that something ultimately rings hollow with these numbers. As humans, it seems to be part of our makeup to never be content. Reaching a goal seems to result in a short-lived moment of satisfaction which is quickly discounted and replaced with a desire to reach a new or higher goal.
We tend to carry around in our heads impossible burdens. We set up expectations in our mind that we will never reach as a consequence of our finitude. We are bounded by space and time but feel compelled to cram an eternity into our finite existence. As much as we may wish it to be otherwise, our human existence is not otherwise.
The reality is that I will never read all the books on my “to be read” list. The reality is that I will never be able to cook every recipe I have tagged as wanting to try. The reality is that I will never get to travel to all the destinations I would like to visit. The reality is that people drop dead every day that have much better health metrics than I do.
The good news is that we can put down those impossible burdens when we realize we have picked them up again and strive to live in the eternity of the instant. There may be times when we feel that we don’t much matter, but the reality is that we matter as much as anyone else.
In the words of Oliver Burkeman, “the river of time flows inexorably on; amazingly, confoundingly, marvelously, we get a brief chance to go kayaking in it”. We may only travel a short span of the river of time in our kayak, but we can make the span we do traverse a worthy, memorable span. The part of the river of time we get to travel may even seem pretty screwed up but that just means there are plenty of places to experience eternity of an instant.
It is true that I will never read all the books on my “to be read” list and it is even possible I won’t read my goal of 36 books this year, but I experienced the eternity of an instant today by reading a good book as it snows outside my window. It is true that I will never cook all the recipes I have tagged to cook but I experienced the eternity of an instant by cooking a big pot of chili with my wife today while we are snowed in. It is true that I will never get to visit all the places I would like to visit, but I experienced the eternity of an instant by being snowed in with my wife in a warm, cozy house that an Airbnb in an exotic locale would never match.
As we enter our first few days of 2025, if you feel compelled to resolve something, I hope it involves eternity of the instant.
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