22 New Year’s Resolutions For 2022
Well, the last two years were a bust, but 2022 is upon us and it’s time to finally become a better person by setting some New Year’s Resolutions. Tomorrow never comes so today is going to get busy.
1. Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions
Is this a cop out point undermining this entire article? Maybe! A New Year’s Resolution is Disney Princess malarky. You look up at the stars, tell yourself you’re gonna become a vegetarian, hold out for an evening, then in the morning you’re eating raw meat.
New Year’s Resolutions fail because they usually have no goal posts or steps in mind. “I want to lose weight” is all well and good, but strategies are rarely put in place to implement its realisation. Find compelling reasons to complete your goals, set checkpoints to inspire your progress and write it all down. Be accountable to yourself. Don’t wait for an arbitrary rotation point in the planets.
2. Wake Up Early
There’s a lot of time in a day, and the best way to maximise it is by being conscious for most of it. Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Bob Iger apparently all wake up before 5am. The early birds get the Billions. A study of 177 self-made millionaires found that at least 50% woke up three hours before their workday begins. Personally, I woke up late for work today, and I’ve been working from home.
I guess that’s why I live in a dirt pit.
3. Start Investing
It’s never been easier to get into the shares game and put your money to work. Apps like Sharesies, Hatch, Stake and InvestNow are easy ways to start putting your pocket money to work rather than blowing it all on Big Ben pies. It doesn’t need to be your life savings, just a little here and there on companies you support. Take the advice of Warren Buffet, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand”. In his case, this meant missing out on Google, and in your case it means purposefully missing out on NFTs.
Stack Habits to Make them Stick
The best way to grow a new habit is by making sure whatever it is laced with elicit and addictive drugs. But if you have trouble getting your hands on enough cocaine to sprinkle along a 5km jogging trail every day, then try this:
You’re going to fail if you just trying and wedge a new habit into your life. Start with small steps that make the new habit digestible. Start with short walks before working your way up to the five-minute mile. If you can, add the newly forming habit to pre-existing routines and habits. Try making it something you can do a little of every day. It still won’t be easy though, research has found the median time to make a new habit an unconscious part of your routine is about two months!
If you can build some sort of reward response into this new routine, that can help immensely. Your body is wired into a four-step pattern for routines. These are:
Cue
Your brain yells at you to initiate a behaviour. Or your phone buzzes to let you know something is up.
Craving
But you aren’t going to follow through without some sort of reward. You know that if you check your phone, you’ll get some sort of endorphin reward.
Response
You undergo the action. Clicking your phone open to check the message
Reward
You now know that your parents are asking you how you are on a picture you posted three years ago. Your brain rewards you with the peace of mind that you now feel completely up to date.
4. Delete Your Social Media Accounts
How much value are you getting out of your social accounts? Is it more than those companies are making out of juicing your humanity into metrics and graphs? Come on, you’ve got no excuse. Either you follow the news or you’ve seen The Social Dilemma. They profit from your grief. Your timeline is toxic and makes you rage half the time. Meet ups can still be organised outside of Facebook events, and Messenger kind of sucks a lot. I heard you guys get ads in that. Who puts up with that?
Do it for your mental wellbeing. Please, you have a problem. This is an intervention.
5. Don’t Take the Rage Bait
There’s someone right now writing an open editorial in one of our illustrious news outlets with a well crafted title designed specifically to get your blood pressure up. Abort, do not engage. They thrive off your hate. If nobody clicks on their articles then hopefully they’ll get fired, or write something worthwhile. The same goes for all those social media posts you’re still looking at because you didn’t follow my advice from #4. Don’t be drawn into a comment war. It only boosts the exposure of the thing you’re commenting on further, and you aren’t going to convince anyone about anything.
6. Develop Projects Of Your Own
If you aren’t already a small business owner, maybe it’s time to start considering what your side hustle is going to be, unless you’re happy working for somebody else for the rest of your life. I’m not telling you how to start a business in a listicle, but if you’re reading this then you’ve already got a good start. Further into the mag we’re probably chatting to someone who’s bootstrapped their way to success, and our regular coach columns further back in the mag regularly give solid advice from industry veterans in running a business. Personally what I can recommend is find your passion, and figure out how to make people pay you to do it.
7. Clean Out Your Closet
Marie Condo said it best when she kicked down the door holding a megaphone and screamed, “You’ve got too much trash you disgusting hoarder. Your consumerism is out of control!” I presume she says that every episode. I’ve not watched the show or read the books.
Apply the two-year rule. Find all the clothes you haven’t worn in two years and donate them to the Salvation Army. The two year rule can apply to everything you own really. If you haven’t used it in that space of time, will you ever?
8. Get a Retirement Plan
If you let old age creep up, you may be ill prepared to live on Super. Current rates are $437 for a single person a week or $672 for a couple. Start working on the nest egg as best you can and maybe take a look at your kiwisaver. If you’ve left it on the default, it may not be making the sort of gains it could be doing.
9. Read a Book on a Top 100 List
I’m not specifying a particular list, because everyone’s into something different. Personally I’ve been working my way through some Sci-fi top 100 lists. It’s been a fun guided experience reading the cornerstone books of the genre. It’s also left me expeditiously ready to discuss the sudden mainstreaming use of the term “Metaverse”.
Reading books keeps your vocabulary growing and it also improves your memory function. Apparently. I do a lot of reading, but I literally couldn’t remember how to get into my RealMe account to get my Covid Vaccine Pass just now.
Genre Defining Books To Check Out in 2022
Chances are if you’re an avid genre fan you’ve read these. for everyone else, here’s a jumping off point to get reading:
Fantasy – The Name of the Wind
Written by Patrick Rothfuss The Name of the Wind is a gritty little tale that starts with a somewhat cheesy premise but spills into an engrossing story of an adventurer growing into himself and his life events along the way. You’ll be furious when you find out there’s still another book in the trilogy to come out. A film is forthcoming.
Sci-fi – Snow Crash
This book is getting bandied around a lot recently for having its ideas grabbed and copyrighted by Faceboo- sorry, Meta. A fun romp through a cyberpunk landscape that pokes fun at modern America and the way our world appears to be going.
Non-Fiction – The Sixth Extinction
Using the latest scientific papers, this book argues we’re in the midst of a sixth man-made extinction. It gives us the hard facts in a form that normal people can understand without having a degree in Knowing How Screwed We All Are.
10. Cut out Baggage Relationships
Are you wasting your time with friends or relatives who are dragging you down? Maybe they’re telling you that you aren’t good enough to do something? You don’t need any more negativity in your life than the nagging self doubt you’ve already been nurturing in your own head.
11. Stop Waiting for the Right Moment
Have you been putting off launching your online store because you’re waiting for it to be just right? Have you been waiting for the stars to align before working on the boat? Thinking of popping the question to your partner? Stop using the excuse of waiting till everything’s perfect and just do it. Get the ball rolling on life whether you’re 100% prepared or not.
12. Do an endurance sport
Find out what your upper limits are, get a sense of achievement you’ve previously only felt after getting out of bed without pulling anything. If Covid is still raging, which it might well be, use the year as a time to train for an Ironman challenge further down the track. What’s the worst that could happen? You get into peak physical condition?
13. Go To The Dentist
It’s recommended that you visit the dentist once every 6-12 months and I know for a FACT, that YOU can’t even remember the last time you even went to the dentist. Just because you’re avoiding them doesn’t make your teeth okay. Your teeth are like the mines of Moria, the fellowship could get lost in those winding tunnels and an old man could fall down one of those cavities.
14. Rewatch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Not everything in this list is going to be airy fairy “become a better person” nonsense, okay. Master and Commander is an awesome film that deserves way more recognition. It was absolutely robbed of its awards in 2003 due to dropping at the same time as Return of the King. The performances across the board are on point, and with the right audio setup you’ll feel like you’re really on a ship chasing down some Napoleonic dogs.
Apparently there’s talk of a prequel being in the very early stages of development.
15. Upskill
We don’t get old till we stop learning or a kid says to you, “Oh, you’re into Weezer? I love classic rock.”
Find something you’ve always been interested in learning or picking up and give it a go. If it isn’t something like kayaking, you could even find a way of learning it while on the job. I’ve used this strategy to learn After Effects at work and then taken what I’ve picked up to use in personal projects.
Movies you Missed in 2021 That Are Worth Going Back For In 2022
While theatres may have been closed for the better part of a year for us with a lot of movies going to streaming, a lot has still slipped through the cracks.
76 Days
Witness the opening days of Covid in Wuhan and how the city changes.
Luzzu
A maltese fisherman struggles with tradition, and throwing it all away to support his family.
Sabaya
Hard documentary of the men and women who infiltrate ISIS camps with nothing but pistols to rescue enslaved girls.
PIG
Nicolas Cage in his best performance ever. Someone’s taken his pig.
The Paper Tigers
Three middle aged dudes try to remember all their old karate as they attempt to avenge their old master
16. Walk More
Getting out of the house and just roaming can be a good way to unwind and just let your mind finally think. This time is essential for letting your mind wander and come up with solutions to things that you just haven’t had the chance to get to while you’ve had your nose to the grindstone.
Tim, director here at M2, is a strong proponent of #2, and he uses that extra time in the morning to do #11.
17. Stop Mowing Your Lawn
I’ve given you a big annoying checklist of jobs, it’s only fair I try and take a few off your back. In Auckland alone, residents spend $131-million on lawn upkeep every year. But expert gardeners agree that even going one month a year without cutting your lawns does a huge amount for biodiversity. A lawn left uncut for a month also creates 10 times more nectar for bees and pollinators than a regularly trimmed yard. Mowing your lawn also burns unnecessary fossil fuels all for the sake of what? Your neighbour not giving you grumpy looks?
18. Schedule a post for 2/22/22
There will be a dozen posts pointing out the date in February, make sure yours is scheduled well in advance. You’ll garner at least three likes for showing your friends how into numerology you are.
If you do this one, you haven’t followed our advice to delete your social media account yet. Come on dude.
19. Learn a new recipe
You have around three recipes you’re cycling through. For the love of hearth and home, please expand your repertoire. For this particular goal, I will also accept brewing as counting as a new recipe. Get some use out of your garage by getting a good beer going.
20. Make a Will
Most things you can put off till death. There’s a whole raft of tasks I’ll happily put off till I’m in the ground, but a will probably shouldn’t be one of them. If you need to make the experience at least a little bit fun, buy a palette of bricks and bequeath them to your friend who lives in an inner city apartment. Upon your death, they can remember you each and every day they trip over the ton of bricks that now occupies their tiny living room.
21. Get vaccinated
I’m writing this in the past, so I can’t say what vaccine rates are like where you are, but I’m guessing at this point I’m directing this at the pocket of holdouts who are worried about what the vaccine might do to them. If you have an actual underlying allergy to vaccines, then of course this is not applicable. But if you’re worried about vaccine shedding, 5G, random personality changes or some other weirdness someone on Instagram has convinced you about, don’t be. The majority of NZ has been immunised, and we aren’t all suddenly becoming Labour voter drones or zombies. You can still catch Covid while being immunised, but your chances of being hospitalised goes way down! Also my newborn can’t get vaccinated so if you could do a solid for the herd, that’d be rad, cheers.
22. Drink More Water
Do you ever get tired or have headaches? You might just have a bad case of being a human! Pair these symptoms with peeing less than four times a day, lethargy, and feeling thirsty, might mean you are thirsty. I’m not a doctor, being thirsty could mean anything. Either way, drinking regular old water is better for you than cola flavoured diabetes in a can.
Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions
I mentioned at the start of this article that New Year’s Resolutions don’t work, but that doesn’t stop us from making them anyway. My own new year’s resolution five years ago was to not make resolutions, add that to the board of failed resolutions.
Exercise more
Just think, before a hundred or so years ago, exercise was what we spent most of our time doing.
Lose weight
I tell myself this every time the kid at the Carl’s Jr. drivethrough says “the usual then?”
Get organised
Organisation is overrated and for psychos with bullet journals.
Learn a new skill or hobby
For some reason, all I can imagine is model trains.
Live life to the fullest
Suitably vague and meaningless. Anyway, back to the 9 to 5.
Save more money / spend less money
I’m trying to live life to the fullest without spending a cent.
Quit smoking
A legitimately noble goal. Good luck, it’s an uphill struggle, and big tobacco is waiting for you with an outstretched vape.
Spend more time with family and friends
Jacinda says I can only do this in a park while doing yoga or whatever.
Travel more
Good luck with Covid on the roam, buddy.
Read more
I’m not making fun of this because this was on my own list.