Let’s Get Another “New Year”

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. (Closing Time, Semisonic.)

2018 had a rough start. I did very little to prepare for the new beginning, thinking I could always get my act together sometime during that first month. As you may deduce from this post, that did not happen. I just sort of stumbled through the first half of the year; I didn’t pull through on any of the few plans I did bother to make (case in point: writing more often on Medium).

Most people use the New Year to get a fresh start on habits and goals. Fact. I didn’t need to read Daniel Pink’s When to know that. I also didn’t need to read the book to know that I basically wasted mine. What the book taught me, however, was how I can get other beginnings — or what social scientists call temporal landmarks. These could be dates that stand out from the sea of forgettable ones, and the prominence of these time markers help us navigate through our day-to-day.

The book has an entire section on these temporal landmarks, but here are some of the highlights I noted down (essentially, the TL;DR):

• People use temporal landmarks to demarcate the passage of time, to mark the end of an era and the start of another.
• These time markers allow people to open new mental accounts. We relegate our old selves into the past, disconnect ourselves from them to accommodate our new superior selves.
• Time markers interrupt day-to-day mundanity and cause us to take a big picture view of our lives.
• By taking advantage of this fresh start effect, we can create strategic turning points in our personal histories.

Now that the first half of the year has passed, I created my own turning point. The past weekend was a well-timed landmark that allowed me to slowly let go of the baggage that toughened Deirdre held on to for so long. I woke up early to run. I got a haircut. I started on a new planner. I wrote down my big goals for the next 9 months. It feels like New Year again.

But Deirdre, why are you telling us about this NOW? It’s kind of too late now that it’s July 3… Well, yeah, I’m sorry that past Deirdre was a procrastomato. But new and improved Deirdre is more helpful. Here are a couple of ideas for temporal landmarks you can use to get another New Year this 2018:

1. Other New Beginnings - let’s get the obvious out of the way: anyone starting a new job or a new school year can easily reap the benefits of the fresh start effect. So please, don’t waste it. Go in prepared and set on what you want to achieve during your time there.
2. Birthdays - is your birthday in the second half of this year? Most people actually decide to start something new or do something differently after their birthday. It’s another obvious demarcation: 25-year old you should be better than 24-year old you. But how about those whose birthdays already passed? Here’s a crazy idea: find out your conception date and maybe you can use that as a temporal landmark… the start of your life as your parents knew it. Too weird for you? Try beginning on a significant other’s birthday.
3. Events Tied to Special Interests - there can be a you before the world cup and a you after the world cup. Maybe pre-FIFA you didn’t work out enough or didn’t believe that underdogs have a chance at winning, but post-FIFA you can be different. In the same way that my life has changed since Ben Platt won his Tony last year, you can take significant events in your special interests and make them personally significant.
4. Travel - for most of us who are working, we usually make sure everything’s in order before we go off the grid for an extended period of time. That is an excellent way to end an era. When you return (assuming that your vacation left you relaxed and recharged), you may find yourself thanking past you for taking care of the loose ends and allowing you to go back to a clean slate. I always find myself renewed after a long weekend in my hometown because I turn off my working brain for a while. By the time I get back, it’s excited to work on challenges again.
5. Failure - on a personal level, I wanted to talk about how I got rejected from a distinguished scholarship recently. Receiving that letter should have been a turning point in my life, but I just made it a reason for the current version of myself to move forward without a goal. Through time I realized that I could go on and continue as the Deirdre that got rejected, or I could also go on as the Deirdre that will do better in the next round of applications. I think this kind of temporal landmark is more powerful simply because it’s already motivated by a clear goal.

Whatever you decide to use as your temporal landmark, I hope you remember to set clear goals and specific habits you want to develop to help achieve them. That was my mistake the last time: I identified habits I wanted to form that weren’t related to my goal. That and my goal was something I had to wait for, not work for. And what use is a fresh start if you’re not going to harness the motivation to do something new?