“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

I have always liked milestones.

Commemorating the passage of time in our artificial human increments. I believe in work and sport anniversaries. When a friend celebrates an Alcoholics Anonymous milestone, I rejoice with them. Theirs is an accomplishment of greater magnitude an import than most. I like celebrating my birthdays. Not because I want adulation, but because I like the inward turn each offers. Thinking about what another year has meant. Where I’m heading. 

Plenty of people know the deep love I reserve for Groundhog Day. Is the whole premise a bit antiquated, a tad silly? No matter.

New Year’s Day commemorates its own beginning. Many people have raced to get out of 2020. As though pining for its passing would bring it sooner. As though pining ever speeds time. Reality tells us there is nothing so definitive as we may hope about a new digit on the calendar. Nature doesn’t care about our constructs. The planet has no concern for a human anniversary or my quaint groundhog themed swim practice next month. But, we’re not trying to please nature. We’re trying lead human lives.

“Resolutions don’t work. Habits and systems can.”—Seth Godin

I used to make resolutions. They feel good. They feel aspirational. The pleasure in aspiring to new heights. Infused with the fire and focus of beginning something. Imagine all the things I can accomplish.

Soon we come to the matter of actually making change, of achieving goals. Now I choose systems. I find plotting the habits I will repeat each day is a better path to reaching the goals I would previously have laid out in New Year’s resolutions.

Wholly unglamorous, right? Therein lies the first clue that our habits and systems may be the real deal. Flashy is alluring. And flashy is distracting. If I set a target, I owe it to myself to lay out a regular and viable framework so I can get there.

Plotting out the habits we will do daily—or often—is the work of building good days. And aren’t good days lived of more value than resolutions forgotten?

Consider an accomplishment we want to experience in the next year. What is something we can and should be doing in the first days of this new year to reach that goal? As James Clear says, “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

Most of my personal goals benefit most from consistency. Exercise or movement practices every day. Hot or cold exposure every day. Writing or other creative work every day. Connection or correspondence with people important to me every day. 

Those and more.

It will surprise no one who knows me that I track habits. I look back on the days I follow through on most or all of my regular, intentional habits and realize how many of those days are the really good days. The satisfying days. On the other hand, a day with very few checked boxes by the time the kids are in bed was a day I was scattered, distracted, or pulled in directions less than satisfying. I am thankful that those days are rare. It is not about the check marks, but about the life I have led when I do the things I already knew were important to my day.

Consistency has a couple components. One is following the course you lay for yourself with regularity. Doing the thing.

The second component, the failsafe mechanism, is getting right back on track if you miss a day or a planned opportunity. Sounds simple, yet this proves the biggest block for many people. We get down on ourselves. Psychology works against us once we view a small failure in too harsh a light. Missing the next day and the next and the next are exponentially greater crimes against our aspirations than simply missing that one time. Successful people know staying on track is far easier to maintain than getting back on track once they fall out of a habit. An object in motion remains in motion, as they say.

It’s like getting back on the horse immediately after you fall off versus turning the horse out to pasture, selling the ranch, and moving to the city. Then one day you look around and wonder why you don’t ride your horse anymore. Easier to just get back on.

The key is to let yourself off the hook before the self-flagellation or shame. But, not off the hook about resuming your habit the next chance you get. Right away. Just run that idea through the filter of just about anything you care about doing well. Some examples:

• Getting back in shape versus maintaining fitness after it is part of your lifestyle.

• Writing every day and not just when inspiration and motivation coincide.

• Brushing your teeth. How would oral hygiene go if we just planned to try to remember to brush at some point during the day rather than the same set schedule?

Habits are everywhere. Just about anything is better done through consistency than as a one-off effort we will have to gear up for. The value of tiny, incremental progress is massive.

We are our habits and actions. Live the life you want to live by living that life. Whatever the day or the date. Whatever the occasion. Doing it consistently. Doing it by habit.

Happy New Year!