How to Make New Decade Resolutions?

I’ve heard that Bill Gates said that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. Sounds like golden wisdom to me. I’ve always been a big fan of new year’s resolutions as I’ve seen the transformative power of sticking to something for an entire year. Resolutions for 2018 and 2019 have worked out reasonably well so I’m going to try something new in addition to new years resolutions for 2020 (separate story): New Decade Resolutions

If what Gates is saying is true, that means we should try to make more outlandish resolutions when viewing things at the decade-level resolution.

Quick review on Annual Resolutions

To nail annual resolutions, I’ve leaned on a usual bag of behavioral tricks that have just really worked: small wins, daily rituals, dependable partners. Quick review here since I’ll reference them below:

Small Wins

Just start small and aim for small wins with a plan to increment regularly over the course of the year. At the beginning of 2018, I started with 15 pushups a day with the aim to increase by 5 pushups a day at the end of each month (so by the end of the year I would be doing 70 per day by December). Done. Much more doable than originally thought.

Daily Rituals

I used to think it was about habit formation. So I read a bunch of books on the topic. Over the course of 2019, I’ve realized that it’s not about habits but rituals. I don’t know if I can ever really develop a “habit” to do pushups — after nearly two years of doing pushups every day, I can safely say that it has not become a habit. It’s still hard to do it every day and the temptation to skip is a daily one that remains to this day. However, it has become a treasured ritual and is just something I do every day. So I just do it. Otherwise I feel like I’ve violated something sacred that I’ve done for 709 days straight now. This thought gives me the resolve to do it even when I’m traveling, sick, sleep-deprived, upset, etc. or all of the above.

Dependable Partners

The key word here is dependable. Though my real secret weapon though is the most powerful accountability app that I know of: WhatsApp! Yes. Good ol’ fashion group messaging. For each of my resolutions, I have a group of people who all report into the group on a regular if not daily basis. We’re all busy professionals with families (and some with kids) who are all committed to following our daily rituals and making it through the year successfully hitting our resolutions. This has made all the difference in the world — no way I could do it without them. For my pushup group, everyone reports back, mostly on a daily basis with a simple number of pushups that they did for the day and that’s pretty much it. No complicated messages or thoughts, just a number (usually they’re doing more than just pushups) and an occasional encouragement or reminder to each other to keep at it. The satisfaction of each check in alone is a great motivator to get down and pump out a few pushups. A commitment to daily check-ins by everyone in the group is essential.

So How Do You Do Make a Decade-Long Resolution?

Never done one before so I have no idea. But I’m using this month to think about it — here are my guesses so far which I’ll update as I think of more:

Broad but impactful. Make resolutions broad enough that there’s room to fine tune as the years go by as context and ability changes. But don’t make them so broad or meta that they lack transformative power.

Meaningful. WHY? This is a commitment that will be one of the most significant you make for a while so make resolutions that you will have been proud to have kept for a decade and will likely (though not necessarily) want to keep for the rest of your life. This will make keeping the resolution not only worthwhile but probably more doable. Nothing worse than sticking to something that doesn’t matter to you. But how do you know it’s going to matter to you for that long if it isn’t already obvious? But if it’s obvious then why do you need to make a resolution around it? How to make a meaningful but non-obvious resolution?

Outlandish. After all, the point is not just to do something for a year ten times but to really accomplish something you didn’t think you could accomplish… ever. Right? How to balance this with doability? Yes, I’d love to be able to do a slam dunk but that really does not seem doable (not that it would be meaningful either). Actually I don’t care if I can ever do a slam dunk but you get the point.

[Hopefully more to come in the coming weeks.]

So How Do You KEEP a Decade-Long Resolution?

No idea either but I’m guessing that in addition to the points mentioned above:

Similar to annual resolutions. Small wins, regular rituals (maybe not daily), and dependable partners will all probably play a key part in success since maybe a decade resolution is just an annual resolution that you know you’re going to make ten times in a row.

Longer timeframe rituals. Doing something every day for a decade sounds kind of nuts. And probably not doable unless there’s some support structure. Maybe it should involve weekly or monthly rituals vs. daily ones.

Wait how will decade resolutions interact with annual resolutions? If I do three of each, that’s SIX per year which is super hard. I’ve always felt three was a magic number in terms of do-ability and focus. If they’re related to each other then that gets messy. Also, WhatsApp only lets you pin three conversations (WeChat lets you pin as many as you want) — which probably is a good thing.

Well I’d love your input or any ideas you might have. Please feel free to comment here, email, or chat/DM me on your favorite client.