The joy of having zero New Year’s resolutions
It's a great time of year to admit you have no idea where you’re going.
I gave up on my goals. And maybe you should too.
No resolutions last year. Zero again next year. And, I’ve gotta say, it feels fantastic.1
A few weeks ago, I also sat down to write an end of year reflection. You know, try to jam a coherent narrative on top of an arbitrary bracket of time. Maybe come up with a few lessons learned over here, a few important-sounding achievements over there. Summed up in a tidy plot to make it all make sense.
There’s no need for that.
The desire to control one’s fate is universal. Studies show this, probably. And the delusion of control hits its peak at New Year’s, when we reluctantly admit we’re deeply flawed, and need to do something about it.
So we hastily throw some ideas on paper, commit to real change this time (cause last time, there were <excuses>). But does it work like that? For anybody?
If you genuinely need change, and this arbitrary bracket of time motivates you… then please, do your thing. But be careful of deceiving yourself. Again.
What you “should” do
Resolutions sound like one of those things we should do. Year-based goals are what serious people do, right? If you don’t have goals, I mean, what are you even doing with your life?
Companies set goals like this. Teams set goals like this. And as we all know, that’s worked out beautifully for everyone involved.
For some people, maybe the structure works. Maybe you need more pressure. More self-torture and anxiety and pushing-and-pulling at yourself until you tear yourself to pieces. I did that too, for a while. So it could work for you.
But as one guy who’s been living life without goals for a while now, I gotta say, it’s way better on this side.
Here. Just give it a try. C’mon. Your parents won’t find out…
I used to have an intense, categorized, color-coded spreadsheet that looked something like this:
Sure, I like making progress. I’m still oriented toward certain outcomes, like having a vague sense of whether I’m healthier or not. But I don’t worry too much about the details. And I don’t write down my goals explicitly anymore.
You may point to my circumstances, saying I’m increasingly detached from the real world. Fair! But I stopped resolutions and personal goals a while ago, even back to when I was part of the traditional working world.
I’ve found life is much better when you stop pretending you can impose your will on everything. When you stop over-structuring and just live, goddamnit.
Accomplishing big things without goals
At the beginning of 2025, I never set out to write a book. Certainly not fiction. And yet here I am, and I did the thing. It became my main focus of the year. Accidentally.
Would a resolution or goal have helped? Of course not. If anything, I would have set some other goal and missed the real one entirely.
Should I have a goal this year of getting it published? Maybe. I’ll work toward it, but like most hard-to-do things, it’s impossible to know how long the process will take. So why set a goal of 12 months, when it could take 18? Am I worse off if it takes 18?
I think there’s a superstition buried in most high-achievers that without constant self-punishment, we’ll wake up as average people. That ease is dangerous and pressure is the only thing holding everything together.
Let me be clear: if your work has goals/objectives, please fulfill the requirements of your job. Please. I built the whole OKR system at my last company, set goals for my team, and aligned goals across a matrixed org. I get it!
But do you really need to double down with goals in your personal life? Does that really help your life get better?
Boxes upon boxes
The more I embrace this directionless-ness, the better I feel. It brings me back to something I wrote early on, in How to stay out of their box (in your career):
The world is desperate to put you into a box and most of us are more than willing to comply. It’s the label(s) by which they can define you…
Boxes can be good for you. They create a container for people to understand your value… And they create guardrails for you to operate within…
Boxes can be bad for you. If you want something else. If you want to move around. If you want your work (or life) to be diverse. If you like to try new things and learn new subjects…
Resolutions and goals are more boxes. They prevent serendipity and evolving interests and emergent opportunities. I’m now an anti-box person. They make me feel claustrophobic.
So no, 2025 wasn’t a year of tidy resolutions or conclusions. It was a year of more searching, questioning, and admitting I don’t have nearly as much figured out as I once pretended. And weirdly? I’m cool with that.
Some people need structure. I apparently need the opposite.
Who’s with me?
Best posts of the year
Most Popular
People love swearing in headlines + a clever Shawshank Redemption reference.
Most Controversial
After 2 years of “freedom,” I had to disagree.
Most Discussed
Why you should buy the red convertible… then crash it on purpose.
Most Loved Series
Interviews with people who hit “enough” and discovered a whole new set of problems after. V2 may come out next year (but I’m not setting any goals about it). If you know someone who I should talk to, let me know.
My Favorite
This one’s closest to the core of what I’m exploring. How the collapse of old meaning systems doesn’t shrink our lives; it expands the frontier.
Oldie
I was honored when bestselling author of The Wealth Ladder, Nick Maggiulli, included this post in his Favorite Investment Writing of 2025.
If you’re interested in my upcoming book and want to be on my super-special, ultra-secret early-access list (updates, sneak peeks, maybe a free copy), you can find out more here:
About as good as living life without LinkedIn, which I accidentally clicked into recently… BIG MISTAKE!
Thank you, Rick! I just needed a bit of permission to ditch the need to track everything and check off yet another box.
Over the last two decades, as I was busy checking off boxes and feeling more accomplished, all of the joy and color slowly, almost imperceptibly, drained from my life. There was no serendipity. No Fun.
I've slowly transitioned to part-time anesthesia work over the last year. What I've found is that there is "space" in my life that I haven't felt in decades. And perhaps more crucial, slowly, but surely, the color is returning to my life. It's beautiful!
Nailed it on the book example. That's the paradox nobody wants to admit: the best stuff in life often shows up when we're not forcing it. I tried a rigid goals system a couple years ago, ended up optimzing for checking boxes instead of doing meaningful work. The "accidental" projects were always more satisfying anyway. Sometimes those arbitrary time brackets just add pressure withou adding clarity.