Since I was young I found little to no point in setting New Year's Resolutions. While I understand that each new year brings with it an air of new beginnings and fresh starts as far as I was concerned if you really wanted to change something about your life you would just start and not worry about waiting until an arbitrary date to start. This year has made me rethink my stance on the whole resolutions thing though and now I think I might be buying into it. Don't get me wrong I don't intend to use #NewYearNewMe for anything other than tongue in cheek irony but having a date to define when the past stopped and when your new life began is almost poetic. With this change of heart, I decided to spend some time thinking about what I wanted to achieve in the coming year and share it with you, partly in interest to see what I could come up with but also as a way of making myself accountable using the Concentrated Sense of Responsibility idea that you can read about here. Before we get started with my resolutions I just want to clarify the difference, for me between a resolution and a goal.

Goals vs. Resolutions

Goals and resolutions aren't always together, but they can be. For me, a goal can prove completion of a resolution but on the flip side, a resolution can be complete without a goal. When I talk about resolutions they tend to be more process-based for example, "Spend more time cultivating friendships than just online or by the text". This, on its own, is talking more about a process than of a specific outcome whereas "Have 80% of my communications with friends be face to face" is a lot more of a specific target and focuses a lot less on the process. For this reason, I would say that resolutions are setting a course for you whereas goals are defining a destination. There are many examples of people talking about how goals (SMART or specific) can be problematic so I won't talk about that now but have a look at the links below if you're interested. Now we have cleared up the differences I see between goals and resolutions here are my 2021 new year's resolutions/goals.

🏋🏼‍♂️ Health & Fitness

🏃🏻‍♂️ Exercise for at least 20 minutes each day

Activities can include: walking, running, football, home workout, gym workout, stretching, biking and climbing

I must post the outcomes to my Instagram stories as a way of keeping myself accountable.

🚰 While I'm at work, only drink water

Unfortunately fizzy drinks (sugary foods/drinks in general) are a big weakness of mine. I find it really easy to keep opening a can of drink every hour or so, or grab a bag of sweets when I'm on my way to the checkout in a supermarket and in 2020 I tried challenging these habits by taking a protein shaker to work and filling it with squash (orange and mango, just to satisfy my sugar needs) and only drinking from that during working hours. The only time I would stray from this path is if I went to McDonald's for lunch where I would get a sugar free coke. Eating fast food is further down this page so hold your judgements until then.

To make this resolution stick I have bought a new water bottle that has indicators on the side for how much you should have drunk throughout the day and I have an app on my phone (Water Reminder) that will push a notification to me every few hours just to make sure I haven't used being away from my desk as an excuse. I am aiming for at least 2 litres of water a day, during work hours (09:00 to 17:30).

🍔 Cut down on fast food intake

This one is pretty self-explanatory, in the past, I have had a bit of a reputation for my terrible eating habits and would quite often end up at a fast-food restaurant for four out of five lunches during the working week. Not only is this not healthy for my body, but it's also not healthy for my bank account. In fact, during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, I ended up being on 80% pay thanks to the furlough scheme but was able to save more money per week than if I had been going to work full time. The vast majority of this spending came from fast food.

A number based goal for this resolution is to have a maximum of 1 fast-food lunch a week and I will try to make that lunch a Subway to make myself feel better.

🧠 Mental Health

In 2020 I started to really struggle with my mental health. Lockdowns, job insecurity and being in the same four walls each day really started taking its toll and eventually it clicked, I needed help. I spoke to my doctor and was put on medication to help and then I searched for additional support from counselling services. I am currently using Cambridgeshire Consultancy in Counselling, a charity based in Cambridgeshire that links individuals with counsellors. I have had some fantastic sessions and have already noticed a difference in the way I am feeling, thinking and looking at the future.

💬 Continue counselling and talking to people around me

I, like so many people, have in the past felt ashamed and embarrassed to talk about my mental health (unless it was good, then I was really keen to push it on to everyone). In 2020 when I started to struggle I pushed it aside, thinking it was easier to carry on with my life than to address the issues. Of course, I was wrong. Through speaking with friends & family and having counselling sessions I now feel a lot more comfortable talking about my mental health, my processes and the 'journey' that I am on but I know all this work could be undone, so I want to continue my counselling and exploring new areas and people where I can share my thoughts and problems and also be there for others who may be struggling or just need a chat.

📝 Journalling

In 2020 I started using Roam Research, "a tool for networked thought", as a note-taking application. I haven't ever really used a note-taking app before (other than Apple Notes) and have only used a diary/journal for a short time when I was about 12. Finding Roam has been a big shift in my life, I write everything in there. I will be making a blog post about Roam and how I use it so come back for that, but essentially Roam allows you to link ideas together using "bi-directional" links that work in a similar way to how our brains link ideas. This allows us to find links that we wouldn't have necessarily found between notes. The other interesting thing about Roam is you start each day with a dated blank page. This is your "daily notes" page and can be used to track things you do in a day, ideas you have, conversations you've been a part of, meetings you've attended, the list never ends. It also makes it really easy to journal your thoughts and feelings and then review them in the future to see how things have changed in your life.

I started journalling occasionally and found it to be very useful. I became less forgetful, I found I was more engaged in conversations with people and bizarrely I managed to pick the days from the weeks (something that was really difficult to do with Roam during the lockdown period in 2020. I intend to continue journalling in Roam to be more aware of my thoughts and feelings over an extended period. This will help me with targeting counselling sessions to things I found cause me distress.

🪄 Be more present and notice the "Casual Magic" in life

When working a full-time job, having hobbies and generally being busy it is very easy to go day to day without stopping. Soon a day becomes a week, then a month, then a year and soon you're asking people "where has all the time gone". In 2021 I don't want to feel like that, I want to be able to stop occasionally and look at the world. Finding times where the world is showing you "casual magic", a term used endlessly by Youtuber UnjadedJade, is something to hold on to and seek out. I had one of these moments recently. I am an Assistant Cub Scout Leader in my local community and as the last meeting before Christmas we had a campfire at our HQ. After the young people had gone home the leaders were left waiting for the fire to burn down so we could leave the area safe to go home. It was about 20:30 at night in December and it was fairly cold with a gentle breeze coming by every so often. Sat near the fire with the heat warming my legs and the breezing creating waves of glowing orange in the embers, I felt at peace (I know that sounds pretentious but just put yourself in the situation). With very little noise around us, I was staring into the embers and felt very peaceful. This was "casual magic", and I want to find more.

🥇 Use the "Go First" rule

I was introduced to this rule by Ali Abdaal in this video. The idea is you begin to take ownership of situations and opportunities by instigating them, in one way or another. Some examples of this are going and introducing yourself to the new employee at work or offering to help with something you're interested in rather than waiting to be asked. Ali uses the example of visiting a new country with some people he didn't know and rather than sinking into the group waiting for others to initiate the ice-breaking he jumped right in and "went first". On hearing this it immediately resonated with me as I'm normally the person holding back waiting for a mutual friend to spark a conversation between me and a new person which often leaves me spending whole days or evenings with people that I end up not talking to simply by not approaching them.

© My Personal Brand

The idea of a "personal brand" is one I have been interested in for some time. The first time I really thought about this was a few years ago when I realised that many social media content creators (YouTubers, Podcasters, Instagram 'influencers' etc.) are in essence both a company and an individual. The idea that by posting on social media you are both showing yourself and your company as the same thing really intrigued me. Since then I have read the book Show Your Work by Austin Kleon who discusses personal branding in more detail than I had ever delved into. The book is centred around putting your work, and the journey you take in creating it, online for everyone to see. One of the standout lines from the book is "In this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist." This really sat with me and made me realise that in a world becoming more and more digital by the day the impression you give people online is just as important as the impression you give people when face to face. From reading this line it became clear to me that it wasn't just content creators that should be creating a "brand" or "name" for themselves online, most people should, that's one of the reasons I started a blog. There will be some people that read this blog, like what they see and get in touch with me just as I do with other people who write blogs. These connections made through mutual interests could span countries and continents and join people that otherwise may have never met, and that's exciting. So, with all that in mind, my Personal Brand resolutions for 2021 are:

🐦 Consistently post to Instagram and Twitter with things that resonate with me or reflect my truest self

I have never been a very active social media user. I have Facebook, Instagram (2 accounts), Twitter and Reddit but very rarely actually post anything to any of them. I will occasionally respond to a Reddit thread or retweet something interesting I find on Twitter but a lot of the time I am just aimlessly scrolling and if I find something funny I will send it, in a DM, to my friends. This means my online presence is very minimal, which to some people may be a good thing, but doesn't really represent me as a person. People who know me would probably describe me as loud, funny and passionate about certain things (among other descriptions that I'm not as proud of), yet online I could be described as invisible and quiet. That's what I want to challenge this year. I have started to use Twitter more and will tweet every time I publish a new blog post and retweet/like tweets and threads I find interesting so they can be found by my followers but I want to be more consistent with it. So many times I scroll past something that really interests me without liking, retweeting or replying through fear of being ignored or seen as strange for being interested in what's being discussed or shared. Likewise, on Instagram, I very rarely post anything because I worry that my life isn't that interesting and people don't care (which is probably true) but I'm done feeling that way so from now on I will be posting more regularly and using Stories as a way to share posts that I'm interested in or have resonated with me. To keep me accountable to this goal feel free to follow me on both Instagram and Twitter - @TheChrisMear

👨🏼‍💻 Blogging - Being consistent and not being ashamed

I started this blog very late in 2020 (I registered the domain thechrismear.com on 18th November) and already regret not starting sooner. When I think back to all the 'free time' I had in the Summer I think about what a missed opportunity that was for getting a head start and wonder where I would be now if I had started then. But I can't change what's in the past so I must focus on the here and now, and now I have a blog I need to be consistent. With consistency in mind, I hereby lay a promise down to publish 50 blog posts between now (writing this on 1st January 2021 so this one can be included) and 31st December 2021 with an intention to have one published per week with a couple of weeks give in case I want/need a break. While I will be aiming for a post a week I won't be too strict on myself as long as the 50 are completed and published by 31st December 2021. I'm relying on you all to hold me accountable to this one.

Shame is probably the wrong word to describe how I feel about this blog. I'm not ashamed of starting it, I have other friends who have started blogs and I have always thought very positively about them and the things they write (check them out here btw!). But I do have a feeling of anxiety when I remember that it is accessible by anyone. Friends, family and colleagues can all see what I am writing/sharing with you, and though I won't be sharing anything that I wouldn't be happy to tell my parents or grandparents, there's still that thing in my mind that worries what people will think. That's why, other than tweeting the links, I haven't made it 'public knowledge' that I have a blog. I don't tell people in person so it's more by chance if they happen to come across it. This is a barrier I want to break down because I don't want to be ashamed about anything I do and I don't want to be around people who make me feel uncomfortable sharing things I enjoy.

👨🏼 Personal Life/Friendships

👥 Cultivate friendships in person rather than just online or by text (COVID dependant)

I have never been great at arranging or sticking to plans with friends. I've been fortunate in the fact that my 'inner circle' of friends are very easy going and even if we don't see each other for months we can get together for an afternoon and resume where we had previously left off. The lockdowns of 2020 made me realise quite how much you lose by only talking to friends over the phone or while online gaming. This has made me keen to get together with friends in 2021 and truly notice when things are great.

💼 Don't let work take over last minute if I have other plans

I've always made myself available to work whenever possible. Evenings, weekends, last minute, you name it I've worked it when asked. On occasions, I have taken work despite already having plans with friends even when saying "no" was an option. Looking back these occasions feel problematic for me because I am often removing what I want from the equation in order to help solve a problem (in this case work needing someone last minute). This disregard for my own wants or needs when other options are available is what I want to change, don't get me wrong I know that in 2021 there will be many occasions where I get asked to stay late or do a weekend delivery and I will say "yes" but the focus of this resolution is the times when I'm saying "yes" when there are other options and I already have something planned. For example, there may be someone else willing to do the job or delivery but I insist that it's fine for me to go and do, despite having plans that doing the job would ruin. That's what I want to change, I want to feel able to say "no" when I have other plans. If work needs me to do it and there's no other option, that's a different story altogether.

📚 Spend more time reading

One thing I have really enjoyed this year is reading. I have never enjoyed reading, in fact, I can name one series of books (6 books in total) that I enjoyed reading and that series is "The Glory Gardens Cricket Club" but this year I have read more books than I have read in total over the last 5 or 6 years combined. I have found that non-fiction, self-help style books are what I really like with a real love for productivity/business/entrepreneurial books. I've found that from reading these books I have more to talk about, I am sleeping better and I am a lot easier to deal with in the mornings. I tend to read for around half an hour before I go to sleep and for around half an hour when I wake up. This buffer between life and sleep that I have created for myself has been really useful for making my quality of sleep (and quantity) much better and for helping me to actually wake up in the mornings before I leave the house. So with an hour a day of reading already 'allocated' why do I want to read more? Well, it's not necessarily that I want to spend more time reading but I want to read more books in the time given. I'm a very slow reader at the moment (probably has something to do with avoiding books as much as possible for the last 14 years of my life) but that means I have lots of books in my "to be read" list which just keeps growing at a rate I can't compete with when it comes to actually reading them.

⭕️ Expand my friendship bases, discover new people with mutual interests

This one links very closely with my Personal Brand resolution. I want to find people, online that I have similar interests to that I can use as a springboard for conversation. I have spent a lot of time this year watching Ali Abdaal's Deep Dive Conversations where he talks to people about topics where generally the other person is an expert or has lots of experience and Ali is interested in learning from them, these conversations are amazing to watch and I would love to be able to have similar conversations with people. I also want to explore the idea of "Weak Ties" which is discussed in the book The Defining Decade by Meg Jay (a fantastic book for anyone in their twenties). The idea is that in life we tend to have close friends and weak ties. Close friends are people that we share a lot of common interests with, spend lots of time together and share more private stories with seeking advice whereas weak ties are the people in life who are just outside your friendship circles either due to distance or just not spending time together. The more weak ties we have the larger our surface area is for 'luck'. See, if you have lots of weak ties you have lots of people willing to talk to you about job roles coming up in their company that they think you'll suit, or the more chance you have of meeting even more new people, one of whom might end up being "the one". As ties with people become stronger the external circles of friends begin to dwindle, almost as if everyone has a finite number of "friend spaces" to use, so having lots of weak ties allows you to have a close-knit group of friends, and lots of opportunities of exploring new challenges, meeting new people. I really want to grow my pool of weak ties and find communities for my interests.

🎲 Find time for casual fun (board games)

On my Mum's side of the family, it is a tradition to all get together for birthdays and Christmas. With cousins, aunts, uncles and my Nan, there can be almost 15 of us that will often be in the same room at the same time and particularly at Christmas me and my cousins will often play board games such as Cluedo or Game of Life and looking back a lot of my favourite memories from Christmas's have been those games, yet I never seem to play board games at any other time, with any other people. There has been a massive spike in the number of people playing Chess in this last year thanks to a Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" has sparked an interest in people so the idea of playing board games isn't unusual but I don't think I've ever even thought about playing at any other time of year. This is something I want to explore and try to play a few games here and there with people where we otherwise may have played a drinking game or watched a movie (not that I don't want to do either of those sometimes too).

💷 Money

💸 Debt-free 2021

Due to decisions made in the past, I have some credit card debt that I want to pay off. Unfortunately, this means that I am currently in a situation where I have very little in terms of savings and spend a fair chunk of my monthly income on paying for things I bought some time ago. In 2020 I finally spent time putting a proper budget together for myself and have managed to stick to it (and have some money leftover). This means that in just a couple of weeks I will be making the final payment on one of the credit lines which is something I never thought I would be saying 6-8 months ago. While this is fantastic the process hasn't stopped, the money I gain from not paying that bill will automatically be funnelled into the next payment schedule as part of a Snowball effect. If everything goes according to the budget, which I will ensure I stick to, I will be debt-free by the end of 2021 (potentially as soon as September). I'm really looking forward to having some money each month to put into a savings account and start looking at moving into my own property. My resolution for 2021 is to have a more stable way of thinking about money and engaging with the idea of "if you can't buy it twice, don't buy it once" which essentially means unless you have enough money to buy something for double its price you probably shouldn't be using the money on that item.

Yes and No's in life

My final few things on this list are things to say "yes" to and things to say "no" to. This section is essentially a mini guide for me to work out what I want to be doing with my time and what I do and don't want to agree to. I'd be interested to see if you have any similar guidelines for your own lives, send me a dm on Twitter and let me know.

👍🏻 I will say "Yes" to:

Opportunities that push me out of my comfort zone (e.g. joining a team of people I don't know)
Things I would normally turn down due to fear of not being good enough (e.g. additional responsibilities at work, playing in a new football team)

👎🏻 I will say "No" to:

Things that don't excite me (inspired by "No "yes." Either "Hell Yeah" or "No"" from Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a new kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers)
Things that stand in the way of things that excite me
Things I would normally do but only because someone else wants me to
Making excuses for not doing something rather than telling the truth
Always putting other people's wishes/feelings before my own

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