More than 99% of the year is not New Year’s.

Don’t make stupid trades. Don’t hang your hopes on two to five shiny dollar bills and ignore the other 98 sitting in your wallet.

All money is good — they’ll let you buy a Starbucks even with money you stole from your mother’s wallet. Hey, if she didn’t wanna get jacked, she shouldn’t have left it lying around! The most anti-American foreign terrorist will accept US dollars in a heartbeat.

All money is good. All days are good. Use them all. Run experiments every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year, every biennium, every triennium, every quadrennium, every lustrum (5 years), every decade.

Don’t let dead popes and despots (during certain periods of history, those were the same thing (lol!)) decide which days matter most to you. They all matter. They’re all good. They’re all a part of your life. They’re all worth spending awesomely.

They say time is money. Maybe we should start acting like it.

No, a new minute.

No.

A new second.

Business author Brian Tracy once said something to the effect of (and I paraphrase): “The most successful ¹ people in our society are those who think of the longest time horizon when using ² money, and the shortest time horizon when using time” ³.

Once again, it’s a new year and, as usual, people be acting crazy, yo. So the big numbers have changed on the calendar…yay. Big whoop. The smaller ones change every second, every hour, every day and every thirty days ⁴. And those are the ones that really count. Success is how you collect your seconds and all that.

Perhaps you’re picking up the vibe already, but I actually kind of hate special occasions — New Year’s especially; I always have. It always seemed to me to be a rejection of the other tens of thousands of days ⁵ that people right now typically live; it always felt like (and, in some times and places, has actually been) a way of getting people to suck it up and take crap the rest of their lives by giving them these “special days”.

For more on the social control function of “special” days, read Frederick Douglass’ autobiographical account of the release-valve-via-inebriation function that Christmas/New Year’s had during the time of ‘Murican chattel slavery; people were encouraged to get as drunk as possible so that they would associate freedom and time off with painful hangovers; those in bondage who didn’t drink were looked upon with great suspicion, revealing as it did an independent and enterprising spirit. A willingness to take one’s destiny into one’s own hands was not a desirable quality in “human property”.

So whenever I hear people describe a birth, wedding or graduation in superlative terms — “the happiest day of my life” — I feel a great sense of “if this corny-a$$ rite of passage is it for you, then FML to you too, sir”. Maybe it’s just an expression and I’m being childish and churlish and taking things too literally, but you don’t want a life where it takes so much preparation, pageantry and/or blood simply to make you happy. You don’t want a life where it takes that much alcohol, catering and rented clothing just to make you happy. You don’t want a life where years — the big numbers on the calendar — need to change just so you feel you can make new life changes and experiments.

Let it take a lot less to make you happy. As Tony Robbins once so wisely suggested, lower the threshold for what it takes to make you feel happy. Way, way low. Also, notice how I’m telling you to be happy while whining about other people’s opinions on their own lives. No hypocrisy to see here, folks. Move along …

Like children in an American school, I want every day to be special. I don’t want to be told when to feel special and brand new, especially not by an authority of some random religion. Greg 13 doesn’t run other aspects of my life; I don’t see why he should run this one; he’s not the Jedi f’n Council! I’ll be the judge of which days are special, thank you very much.

Anyway, so, enjoy your Wednesday! And enjoy these:

• “New Year’s Resolutions are behaviorally unsound. In order to keep doing something, we need periodic reinforcement, like recognition or reward. That is lacking with New Year’s Resolutions. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are too grandiose, like: I’m going to get myself fit this year. Or, I’m going to finish my MBA this year. Too much for most of us.
  In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.”
  [Stop With The Resolutions, Start With The Crack]
• “every day is New Year’s” [Practical Tips on What To Do Instead of New Year’s Resolutions | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time] is.gd/61xE0e
• Intermediate Goals, Mini-Dreams | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time – is.gd/GmB5TG

OK, so, we’ve let down our pants and gone and taken a collective #2 on a New Year’s tradition. So what now?

Well, I like to think that every day is New Year’s; I really do; every day is a chance to start again. But if that’s too much for you, try this instead. Try…

• New Month’s Resolutions, or
• New Fortnight’s Resolutions, or
• New Triplet (or whatever a 3-week period is called)’s Resolutions

Every month, set a goal for, say, how many:

• L2 movies to buy
• L2 movies to play
• SRS reps to do
• Et cetera

And then see how you’re doing at the end of the month. Rather than judge your performance yes/no (goal reached or not), judge it on what % of the goal you completed. In other words, judge it proportionally. Also:

• Be sure to set the goal to be something that is 
  • Fun
  • Directly within your control (you can control how many emails you send, not how many friends you have)
• Less is more. The fewer goals you set, the better. I think…maybe…or not, I dunno, I mean…I would never try to inflate the number of goals per se, and I would prune the useless ones, so…it’s not like I’d get anal about it, I’d just only have the goals I care about, no more, no less…

You don’t have to wait till M/1 (the first of the month) either, you could just pick any arbitrary 30-day period. Say, 1/10 through 2/10.

Another option is New Week’s Resolutions, but…I personally tend to find that stressful, actually. The week has always been an awkward unit for me. So, yeah, no more on that from me .

You could also split the difference and make New Fortnight’s Resolutions for every 2~3 weeks ¹, that way you’re really marching to your own tune, really spinning on your own axis, as it were. Pivoting on your own fulcrum, if you will. You get the picture.

You wanna know which is my favorite? Well, I especially like the 3-weeks-at-a-time deal because it has a beginning, middle and end “triplet” structure. It’s long enough to be significant (and, if the 21-day “rule” is to be believed, habit-forming), but short enough that you don’t waste time. You get 15~17 triplets a year, not just 1 new year’s day. Also, because it’s not bound to the calendar, you don’t find yourself procrastinating (waiting for a new month/year to begin) or self-flagellating (“Oh sheet! Today’s the first day of the month and I still haven’t started!”). You can also take a day or two off after each triplet, for analysis and reflection, before going at it again.

To tell you the truth though, personally, I’m not the biggest goal-setter. I just try to do my best in the moment, each day. I tend to just GLOAF it a lot. Which is not to say I don’t set goals, I do, and but I also change them quite often. Some people will tell you this is a bad thing, but I’ve personally found that it’s a wonderful thing. And I’ve been pleased to find that the great productivity author and speaker Brian Tracy is on my side of the issue. In fact, if I recall correctly, he’s the one who turned me onto this whole goal-changing thing; he gave me the courage to be a goal-changer and not just a goal-setter. He “made it OK”.

Ultimately, goals, targets, resolutions, projections, whatever you wanna call them, are just tools. The point is to use them and not be used by them. You shouldn’t be taking orders from your tools — your tools should be taking orders from you. Ideas are the biggest tools of them all. They’re for using, not worshipping. Short of a steel-booted kick in the nuts, nothing’s more painful than doggedly continuing to go for something you don’t even want any more just because it’s something you thought you wanted, that you thought mattered, back in the past. But now you’ve said it, you said you wanted it, so, like a proverbial lemming off a cliff ², you’re grimly marching to the bitter end. So, yeah, I’m constantly changing — refining, tweaking, modding and even discarding — goals as new information comes in. And yes, that information includes new personal preferences and desires. ³

Does that make me a flip-flopper? ⁴ I suppose it does. But then again, so what? I’m not a political monkey here for your entertainment, right? We like things and people who don’t change, not because stasis is good but because it’s convenient for us. Mercurial personalities are much more difficult to deal with than even consistently negative — violent, surly, cruel — ones. You know what, though? If you want something that doesn’t change, get a stone (oh, wait, those change, too! ). If you want something straight, get a needle (they taper a bit, but, whatever). If you want to hear the same thing over and over again, put an mp3 on loop. Human beings change. ⁵

Crack?

It’s New Year’s again. And once again, I am here, my Utah-bred sense of moral superiority on full throttle (hookers and blow notwithstanding) to pour gallons of icy cold, sobering water on all the excitement.

New Year’s resolutions are great and all — they really are good; they come from “the right place”, people make them for good reasons. But as any AJATTeer knows, good reasons are bad. If what we needed were good reasons, there’d be no smokers and we’d all be nice to our mothers .

Perhaps I’m just an inveterate iconoclast. I haven’t always hated holidays, but I definitely started hating them young. And why? Well, because I got and get the sneaky feeling that other people are trying to tell uz when and how to be happy, when to feel good. Well, screw being happy 1 day a year, or even 2 days a week. Give me the other 5. Give me all 365. Monday morning is my cartoon and pyjamas time, beaches .

You don’t need New Year’s. You needn’t be bound by it. You’re bigger and better than some date system that some NAMBLA guys made a thousand years ago or whenever. Every day — or, at the very least, every month — can be your New Year’s.

As Dragon Ash taught us many New Years’ ago, life goes on. Your life included. Again, your life is even bigger and better than a year change. I want you to know that intuitively, to understand it in your bones, so that you can continue to have lots of good feelings and continue to make lots of good choices that don’t depend on it being early January, that continue long after the socially mandated 1/1 excitement has worn off.

But enough from me. Sometimes (OK, all the time, shaddup, I know), other people word things way better than me. Such is the case with “Making Yourself Happy: The Value of Setting Short-Term Goals“, an essay by Dr. Ted Sielaff, Emeritus Professor of Business at San Jose State University, of which the following is an excerpt:

Your expectations are too high.

New Year’s Resolutions are behaviorally unsound. In order to keep doing something, we need periodic reinforcement, like recognition or reward. That is lacking with New Year’s Resolutions. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are too grandiose, like: I’m going to get myself fit this year. Or, I’m going to finish my MBA this year. Too much for most of us.

In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time. 

Make short term goals that are in harmony with some long term strategy you might have. Don’t make a resolution for a year. For example, suppose your long term strategy is to write a book. It does no good to say: “This year I intend to finish writing a book”.

I have found it better to set goals for just a month, like this: “I want to finish the first draft of the chapter of my book on “The People Living in Yosemite Park”. That would be a doable goal if I worked at it every day and had my research done. And, at the end of the month, I could check to see if I reached it.

In stating the short term goal, you should make it specific and measurable. Don’t say something like: “I intend to write every day”. That is too vague.

I have found that if I set short term goals for myself that are in harmony with a bigger strategy that I have I can be very happy. And, the interesting thing is that these short term goals often fit together in building a bigger picture.

Too many goals can frustrate you. So, keep the list short. Make it something where you will easily do everything and be victorious – be the winner.

So, my advice is get busy on goals. Forget the New Year’s Resolutions stuff. It’s not helpful. But, small goals that are in harmony with a bigger plan can make you a winner and will be fun.

And as if Dr. Ted’s sagacity weren’t enough for you, here’s a small piece of a medium-length piece by a big man, Juan Rivera of Samurai Mind Online, on the joys of crack…time:

I have discovered crack, and it is good.

I do crack whenever I have a moment. Well, a crack is actually a moment because the crack that I am using is cracks in time–little moments when I can do a little part of a dream.

Little chunks of time turn can turn everything you are trying to attempt into a little game.

And it works best when it feels like a game. If it starts feeling like work, play a new game or just space out.

I know there are going to be a lot of articles and promotions for how to achieve goals for the New Year. But just sit back, relax, and do crack.

↑Juan’s happens not only to be good advice but also one of the best translations and puns on a Japanese word (隙間) ever executed.

So…yeah…New Year’s…don’t make a big deal out of it: make a small deal out of it. Small, atomic actions. Take one tiny crack rock at a time, put it in your crack pipe, and smoke it like an enemy in an FPS game.

And if in doubt…just make more of the good choices you’re already making.

Adults are freaking crazy. “Oh snap, playa! The counter on number of times the Earth has revolved around the Sun since Arbitrarily Decided Religious Event X has changed. Let’s get drunk and make promises to ourselves that we’re not going to keep.”

Yeah…no.

Here’s some reading to help you calm the heck down and stay off the resolution bandwagon:

• Potheads, Planners and Players | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/9aRfCL
• Automated Discipline: How To Stay On Track All The Time | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time http://j.mp/9iWIaw
• Making Yourself Happy
  

  “New Year’s Resolutions are behaviorally unsound. In order to keep doing something, we need periodic reinforcement, like recognition or reward. That is lacking with New Year’s Resolutions. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are too grandiose, like: I’m going to get myself fit this year. Or, I’m going to finish my MBA this year. Too much for most of us.In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It is like playing tennis with someone close to your skill.”

  j.mp/h5Z3RO

• ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way’ by Robert Maurer j.mp/sxynqf
• “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy j.mp/tllC6a