This Seventyish Woman Doesn’t Believe in Making New Years Resolutions
By: Jean Anne Feldeisen
Tags: Aging, New Year, New Years Resolutions, Life Lessons

This Seventyish Woman Doesn’t Believe in Making New Years Resolutions

Instead, I review, plan, and implement

photo by Ray Hennesy on Unsplash

I love the week after Christmas. I hang in a kind of suspended animation between one holiday and the other. I can relax after the long hard trail toward a pleasurable and fulfilling Christmas celebration, basking in memories of smiles and hugs and kindnesses shared with people I love. Yet I am aware of the big event coming up only a few days away when the world will complete one year and begin another. I take this change very seriously.

It is big for me, though of course the year’s end is just a somewhat arbitrary artifact of human invention. But it’s an artifact I’ve lived with for seventy some years and, for me, these divisions have significance. It is a time to tally up my past year. Joys and sorrows, wins and losses, progress and blocks to progress.

These days I am not at all judgmental about this process, simply want to see how far I have gone, what parts of my plan were neglected and why. Where did I shine, where was most of my effort focused? What snags did I run up against and how did my course veer off into different directions than I expected? How do my current goals and plans fit into the old map and what might I do to get where I want to go in the coming year? This week I take stock of my life and make plans. One of my favorite activities.

Getting Things Done

One of the things I think I will do this year is a project that I learned from the management guru David Allen in his book Getting Things Done. It is to make a giant “inbox” full of all the unfinished stuff in my life. The ideas and projects and activities and leftovers that clutter my house, my mind.

I love this plan. I’ve done it a few times in the past with great results. So for the next few days I will go through the house and my lists here and there and see if I can get hold of everything that is or could be or wants to be a project on my mind and list them on a giant project list. I will make an area next to my upstairs desk for this stuff. I have a big cardboard box. If things are too big to take there I write the thing on an index card and put it in the box as a proxy.

Included will be papers and pictures and books and folders and envelopes and cards and bills and anything I need to do something about. There’s the broken rowing machine on the picnic table (index card), the old tv we replaced last Christmas still sitting in a corner of our bedroom, pictures not framed, stuff I started working on but forgot, things, like that. This flotsam and jetsam clogs up the free flow of my brain and this is a nice way to deal with all of it at once.

Early on Thursday, I’ll take a cup of coffee to my desk. Then go through the box, item by item and either do it, if it takes less than two minutes (scheduling an appointment), or put it on a master Project List. I will do this with everything that is cluttering my house, desk, brain, computer, phone, bedside table, car, porch, everything! Now I have a Master Project List. Then, I go through and make action lists of different sorts

Things to do at home, Things to do on the computer, Things to do when running errands, Things to do on the phone, etc.

Then go to each item on the list and decide on the next action I need to take on it, and put that on one of those lists. Then I can set about doing needed tasks when I can, steadily working toward completing the project. This will be the foundation of my to-do lists throughout the year, always pulling from the next-action list.

New Years is a good time to give yourselves this gift of dumping all of the flotsam and jetsam of your life onto an orderly project list and list of next-actions you need to take. It works really well. Thank you David Allen.

So I am going to do that in the next few days, just piling up things in my “inbox” and sorting through them on the 30th as I make my way towards a clear slate in the New Year.

During this week I have a rough plan. It goes something like this:

26th Be Mindful

This day is quiet and reflective, just basking in all that happened yesterday and the days leading up to it. Be alone, think, stare into space. Walk around and put little things in my house back in order. This year I added eat lightly, drink lots of water, try to stay present.

27th Review

Kick into a higher gear.

Take a long walk. Review my last years list of goals to start some ideas percolating in my brain. Think about my house as I’m cleaning up. What things do I need to repair, clean, buy? What routines might help me keep up with things better? Are there places where I can make changes, things to give away or throw out? Begin to put ideas on a list and add things to my “inbox” to deal with on the 30th.

28th Review Self Care

Take a walk. Think about my plans for my health: what needs to be changed. Make a meal plan for the week. How can I make better plans for regular exercise, better sleep hygiene? What new routines could I begin? What equipment might I need, or resources? Where have I fallen short of my goals and what seems to get in the way? Are my old goals even relevant now? Do they need to be changed? Given a makeover or thrown completely out the window? I put my ideas on the project list and related “things” in the inbox.

29th Review Work and Hobbies

What about my work? Do I have different expectations or goals? Are there things I need to learn in order to do a better job? Can I clean out old paperwork and make some new folders for this year? What about my hobbies such as piano practice, knitting, cooking? What kinds of new routines might be helpful. Do I need to buy new piano music? Do I need a teacher? Would it help to take a class in something? Put things to be done, projects you’ve been thinking about starting, have actually started or almost completed, anything pending, put in the inbox.

30th Master Project List and Action Lists

Go through the inbox. Make a Master Project List for all the projects I’ve come across in the last few days. What am I working on or interested in starting or finishing? What do I have sitting around the house in limbo? What emails have I put off answering, appointments needing to be made. I put these things on the project list along with everything else in the inbox.

Decide on a first-action for each project and add to action lists

31st New Years Eve

On the 31st, besides making a lentil soup for tomorrow (which is the traditional New Years Meal for good luck throughout the year and given this past year, I say we take whatever luck we can find), plan a feast and a frolic to celebrate the new year’s eve. Drink champagne, kiss someone.

If there isn’t enough frolicking to last until midnight (if I’m lucky my husband could be convinced to stay up til 9), I enjoy reading over last year’s goals in my 2020 diary, and I begin the process of writing revised goals in the 2021 diary. This is more fun than kissing anyway (just kidding).

January First, New Year’s Day

Eat some lucky lentil soup. Continue the revising of goals and setting up this year’s diary and other record keeping books. Begin end of year accounting tasks, disposing of records, changing calendars, new file folders, etc. Start one of your new habits (maybe a new one every month? So you don’t get overwhelmed?)

Some people are making a point of talking about how 2021 will be better and good riddance to 2020. Yes, it has been a horror of a year, one for the record-books, surely. But I don’t see any point in celebrating the end of this year any differently than any other year. I mean, the year itself had nothing to do with Covid-19 or our horrible president, and doleful political scene. Just changing years is not going to fix any of that.

But go ahead, be hopeful that 2021 will be better somehow. I remember hearing that line at the end of 2019, but it was oh so wrong. Still, hope is a good thing.

On the bright side, there are vaccines being given, we are hopefully inaugurating a new president, and we are still alive so far,(even though I am on the other side of 70 and at heightened risk of death if I so much as hug someone other than my spouse). I haven’t been sick yet, and I have learned a damned lot of new stuff this horrid year. I hope you all stay well and enjoy the end of the year, too.