In any case…For many people, the year starts with a lot of vim and vigor and then around now reality starts to set in. Various surveys find that a lot of people have abandoned their goals and resolutions by now (if not earlier).

There are reasons for this. Sometimes goals just aren’t that appealing. Sometimes they’re vague. Sometimes they’re not compatible with life as it is. It may work to exercise for an hour a day on a normal workday when nothing goes wrong, but not on a snow day when several family members have the flu…which is just as much life as any other day (and is probably more likely to happen in January than other times).

I have learned not to set unrealistic goals like that for precisely this reason. But, with the first month of 2025 over, I can report that my (more realistic) goals seem to be going fairly well.

I have listened to the first 33 days of the Complete Beethoven calendar (with a bonus listen to his 8th and 9th symphonies in Boston). I am not sure if I set this as an “official” goal, but I’m also reading through Anna Karenina, one chapter at a time. I have read 33 chapters. I continue to write 2 lines a day in my sonnets. I wrote one called “For the birds” with a nod at the Eagles that I might share later this week.

My “healthy living” goal was to eat produce for breakfast every morning. I can report that I have done this 33 days in a row. A lot of times this has been apple slices, so I’ve needed to make sure we have apples in the house at all times. Some mornings I’ve just grabbed a few carrot sticks to munch while I’m making my eggs. At my hotel in Boston I had a lot of cantaloupe from the buffet. One morning I had avocados, and another morning I had a full mushroom omelette… but it tends to be apples.

I set a goal to go to three professional sports events: A Sixers game, an Eagles Game, and a Phillies game. I thought this would take me to fall to complete, but thanks to the Eagles’ post-season run, I have now been to three events (one Sixers, two Eagles, but not the Phillies yet of course). So this goal is mostly done and I’m sure I’ll be able to get to a baseball game this summer.

As another fun goal, I planned to buy some more dollhouse furniture for my miniature scenes in my office. I ordered some from a place in Australia before Christmas, but this has yet to arrive, so I’m fearing that may have gone missing in the vagaries of international shipping. But I got a tip about a place called Flip This Dollhouse in New Bedford, MA, so I might need to make a road trip there (and maybe tack on some Moby Dick tourism too with the area?)

On the professional front, my major goal is to finish Big Time (my next book). My deadline is April 1 and I can see the finish line. I’ve basically collected everything I need to collect for the book itself, so now it’s a matter of piecing things together. I found the fascinating tale of a Soviet scientist who tracked his time for 56 years so…that’s going to get a mention. I also added up my hours spent on various things in 2024. It was eye opening, even for me. I’ll write more on that later, but one major insight is that I don’t think I’m working enough, and I worry I’m not going to find stories like that Soviet scientist precisely because my days are fragmented but…we shall see. The good news is, unlike with my first book, I’m now regularly emailing 50,000 people and many of them have ideas, and have come across things of interest, so there is some leverage. Wish me luck on finishing…

Finally, I set a goal to do one extra strength training session each week beyond the one I do with my trainer. I’ve been doing this by combining it with my treadmill workouts (how I tend to run when there’s snow outside).

Anyway, I’m sure life will intervene in various ways, so we’ll see how this all goes. But at least the resolutions are good through January. I’m enjoying all these resolutions enough that it doesn’t feel too onerous to stick with them.

How are your resolutions, one month in?

In this episode, Sarah and I share our hopes and dreams for the coming year. We look at different domains: work, relationships, self. We talk about habits and routines. Sarah shares a unique take on “24 for 24” which she hopes will help inspire some new experiences this year.

We’d love to hear about your goals as well! We will also revisit our own goals this summer with a mid-year check-in, and next winter with our “2024 year in review” episode. Knowing we’ll be recording these future episodes helps keep us on track. Even if you’re not recording a podcast, you might consider setting some check-ins through the year to see how you’re doing.

Please give the episode a listen, and as always we welcome ratings and reviews. We’ve also been excited to see our Patreon community grow over the past few weeks. 2024 will be an exciting year for Best of Both Worlds, so stay tuned!

In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I share highlights from 2023. We look back at the goals we set for the year and we talk about whether we achieved those goals or whether we needed to pivot (spoiler alert: some worked better than others!). In general, it was an awesome year, for both of us individually and for the show. We are grateful for that!

If you are reading this post before noon, eastern, there is still time to join our Patreon community before our annual goal-setting workshop. Every year, Sarah leads an hour-long session on Zoom where we brainstorm goals for the year and spend some time figuring out which we might commit to. It’s like a mini-version of her Best Laid Plans Academy. We’ll be gathering at noon, eastern, today (12/12). The zoom link is posted on our Patreon page. Membership is $9/month. Of course if you are reading this after noon, we’d still love to have you! The session is recorded and can definitely be done on your own after the fact. Hope to see you there!

In the meantime, what were your 2023 highlights? Some of mine (mentioned in this week’s episode) were seeing Taylor Swift in concert (apparently she trained for it by singing her whole set list while running on the treadmill – wow!), biking in Norway, and re-reading The Cortlandt Boys for the first time in 6 years (and liking it). We’ll share our goals for 2024 in an upcoming episode!

For instance, I have read almost all the works of Shakespeare. I actually have read everything except two very short works in my anthology (I just finished The Tempest this week), but my reading calendar has me reading The Two Noble Kinsmen, which current scholarship says Shakespeare co-wrote. I also read Edward III a few weeks ago, which was not in my anthology, but seems to now be put in the Shakespeare camp. Anyway, that project is pretty much done.

Our Best of Both Worlds goal-setting workshop for the Patreon community happened on December 14, 2021. (This year’s is today, at noon, eastern if you want to join by then…). During that workshop, I decided to do my year-long writing project (basically, a very short morning pages thing I always do) with a specific theme in mind. I would do 365 entries describing a single day in the life of a character. I elected to model this on my day of December 14, 2021. It happened to be a very long and full day, if not particularly life-changing, but I thought it would be interesting to see if I could pace myself through writing 365 100-200 word vignettes on normal life.

And I have! We are closing in on sleep right now on this day, which was almost exactly a year ago, some 348 entires in. I am at 49,577 words, so it will wind up being about 51,000 words or so. This is, technically, a book length manuscript.

I’m a little wary of going through and re-reading it, because it is probably not that great. But who knows. Maybe it’s interesting. The point was more to develop the writing discipline of doing this. Something always comes to me. I have never thought that I have nothing to say. It is also a reminder to me that 100-200 words is easy. It inspires no resistance. But 100-200 words a day over a year is a book. Small things done repeatedly truly do add up. That is true with reading through Shakespeare at the rate of three pages a day, and it is true of writing things.

In any case, if you are looking for a resolution for 2023…maybe you could consider a writing project along these lines! Just write 100-200 words a day on something. The point is not to do much each time. It is to just keep going. Time will pass anyway. We may as well make the journey mindfully.

In other news: I was a guest on Modern Mrs. Darcy’s What Should I Read Next? podcast! This was so cool as it is one of my favorite podcasts. We talk about reading projects and how to tackle ambitious works (like Shakespeare or War and Peace…)

Tranquility by Tuesday is also making a few end-of-year lists. The Globe and Mail listed it as one of the best management books of the year (requires subscription). The Next Big Idea Club listed it as one of the top productivity books of the year. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, would you do so? Thank you!

Photo: Not currently looking like this…more of an icy rain with a tiny bit of accumulation, much to my kids’ disappointment. Dec 14, 2021 was actually unseasonably warm — a detail I remember thanks to my analyzing and recounting every second of that day! 

We got the windows clean, the roof fixed (hello Hurricane Ida…), mums planted and — not coincidentally — photos taken of the outside of the current house for its upcoming listing. I’m a bit scared about the inside photos as there is just a lot of stuff. Seven people living in a house will do that, and in nice real estate photos, the rooms don’t even have waste baskets. But we will go room to room I guess and move stuff out and stage it and move it back.

In the meantime, the week also featured soccer, baseball, karate, math tutoring, Science Olympiad practice, gymnastics, my choir practice, alto sax practice + lessons, and the discovery that my daughter chose the trumpet as her instrument for school band/lessons…she was so torn between that and the clarinet. Here’s hoping she chose well. (Any advice from trumpet players out there?) I also bought presents for and planned her upcoming birthday.

In any case, we are now barreling into the last three months of the year. The fourth quarter of the year is a festive one (Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas!). It’s also an opportunity to end the year strong. On the work front, this is especially true for any organizations that do end-of-year-performance reviews. It should not be the case that what happens in October matters more than what happens in February but…we’re human. We naturally remember recent things better. So the next few weeks would be a great time to figure out a professional goal that is doable and get it done. Landing one big new client. Writing a white paper. Organizing that (virtual) brown bag lunch learning session. In my case, I plan to finish editing Tranquility by Tuesday during Q4, including (hopefully!) doing a short writing retreat that will allow me to focus on it for a few days without dealing with the window cleaning, kid shuttling madness that follows me around at home. We will see if I attempt NaNoWriMo. That might be biting off more than I can chew.

On the personal front, there is still time to achieve a goal or two that would make the year feel great. If you’re looking for a reason to run or walk more regularly, you could sign up for a turkey trot style 5k and definitely be in better shape for it just shy of 8 weeks from today. In general, three months is a lot of time. It’s not infinite, but it’s enough to do a lot. I hope. I plan to list this house (I won’t set a goal of selling it because that’s not within my control), finish with the renovations at the new one, and start the process of moving in.

I will finish War and Peace. I’m on page 1172 of 1455. I’m really enjoying this slow pace of reading one chapter a day. It matches up well enough in places on the calendar with the action in the story that I wonder if Tolstoy had that in mind. September’s chapters featured the invasion and burning of Moscow and the aftermath…and that is when it happened. So the early fall landscape descriptions seem incredibly apt.

My husband was traveling some this week too, and so I had a few solo mornings (well, solo until 8, but the morning often starts around 5:30 here). I have been really happy to have older children in addition to a toddler. This morning the 12-year-old built forts with him while I took a shower. It was so much more relaxing than trying to shower with the toddler in the bathroom. We take our victories where we can get them. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Photo: Progress on my fall-themed 1000-piece puzzle