first things first, try as i might, i simply cannot quit the new years resolution industrial complex. i love the freshness of a new year, i love the optimism it brings, i love an explicit chance to believe in my capacity to change and grow.
however, long, long gone are the days in which i would sit, at the cusp of a new year, and list out every single thing i wanted to do and change about myself, and then embark on a near manic quest to do so many of them at once that i would be fully and completely exhausted by january 15, if not earlier. and if there was any inkling of that behavior left, the pandemic well and fully knocked that out of me.
and judging by the response that dr. jane jones got from her tweet, we’re all tired. and from where i sit, in january 2022, there’s quite enough uncertainty about the way the year will unfold for anyone to feel a little uneasy planning for the whole year.
a year is a very long time. a pandemic year - even longer. so, here are a few of my most important ideas and tools for thinking about, and actually planning, in a time like this TM:
plans are just drafts of what you think you might do with the resources you think you might have available. they are, like any good draft, subject to revision, further research, and the whims of the (cosmic) editor. making a plan in january that doesn’t fit in march, or november, isn’t a sign of failure - just a sign that you may need some tweaking to reflect any changes.
once more for the people in the back: plans take into account the resources you have - time, energy, support. how many of us have written a plan for 100 hour work weeks when we really only have capacity for 30? how many of us plan for a year where teaching happens equally week to week and then get totally surprised by the crush of work at midterms and finals? the more realistic you can be about your resources, the less you have to adjust. but, following point one, an adjustment isn’t a failure, just a revision.
i myself have leaned hard into seasonal/quarterly planning and resolutions. this is an idea that i learned from sarah faith gottesdienercts.com/pages/about and it make so much sense to me. we might have an overarching goal for the year (like, finish the dissertation) but how that translates into daily, weekly, or monthly rhythms is very likely to shift, change, and evolve as time passes. so rather than trying to pick a resolution (like writing every day) that works in january when classes are still ramping up but not in april, when you’re swamped, you pick just for the next season. my winter resolutions often have a lot to do with supporting myself through the cold, dark months, and my summer ones are usually more buoyant. i change all year long. so do my goals. it makes sense that my habits and resolutions do too.
you can also slow the planning process way, way down - or plan to revisit it often if you do it in a more compressed way. maybe you decide on your big three projects/focuses for the year, and then every month you make a plan for the individual steps and when/how you’ll do them. maybe you wait until the second week of the semester and you get a sense of your students and work load before you decide on a writing schedule/habit. the more information you have, the more specific the plan - and the more specific the plan, the more useful it is.
above all else, planning is a way to help make some decisions (what’s important, what to focus on, when to do it, how to do it) in advance to reduce decision fatigue. if your plans leave you tired, or even more confused than when you started, i encourage you to focus smaller, more actionable, more concrete, even if that means abandoning the year long view and only visiting it from time to time, while you keep your gaze firmly on the daily/weekly. it all adds up - little bit by little bit. let your plan help keep you moving in the direction you want to be going, even if you need to improvise a little bit on the exact route to get there.