Start Planning and Doing For Next Year Now

How an early start can give you the edge you need to succeed in 2024

Early morning at Leo Carrillo State Beach, California. The simple reward of doing what you love is doing what you love. Photo: Per Håkansson.

Fewer Better Things Plan for 2024

Hello everyone!

This newsletter has several different futures but I’ve decided on the following:

1. Write about my journey into a simple and sustainable lifestyle by understanding our evolutionary behavior, needs, and emotions

2. Write about how to save time, attention, and creative energy to focus on what really matters when you take full control of your life

3. Write about how to work less, live more through increased productivity, new technologies, understanding your needs, and simplification strategies

4. Recommend books, videos, and other sources to learn to live by the ethos of fewer better things, owning only the sustainable essentials, doing more

If you’re interested in tagging along on this fun and exploratory journey, please subscribe below for a yearly subscription (50 issues) for $35 per year.

---

Personal Planning for 2024

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I design and start executing next year’s plan. It’s the perfect time if you don’t get sucked into the holiday hysteria. You could say that I’ve swapped short-term shopping for long-term betterment.

December is my least favorite month in the northern hemisphere with unpredictable weather, fewer daylight hours, and the mindless chase to keep up with a tradition* that lasts a few hours and then is forever gone.

Instead I reflect on the past year, plan the big strokes for the following year, and, most importantly, get started executing the new plan to hit the ground running hard when New Year’s Day arrives and the champagne has faded.

Big strokes:

• Grow my newsletters, finalize my book

• Get back into giving talks across the world

• Improve physical strength and my surfing

• Connect with new and old friends

The success rate increases cause most new habits are already solidified and you have transcended from how starting feels impossible to how stopping feels impossible. And that’s a great place to be on the first day of the year.

"Life is harder when you expect a lot of the world and little of yourself. Life is easier when you expect a lot of yourself and little of the world. High standards, low expectations." – James Clear

It’s a simple process:

1. I use pen and paper to flush out and draft ideas and goals. They all center on physical, intellectual, mental, spiritual, financial, and social wellbeing.

2. I then look at where I’d like to be within these areas within the next 12 month and what it would take to get there by reengineering the process.