I’m not a fan of traditional New Years Resolutions, as I wrote about here, but as we started 2026 I wanted to think even a bit more differently about the problem of improvement. First, I don’t think anyone can know what the future holds – and anyone saying they do know, is lying or delusional or both. And while there may be things that make sense to do now (and you should therefore do them) they won’t necessarily makes sense in six or eight months. So I don’t really think we should be building plans around the fact that it just happens to be January 1st any more than we should around March 8th or June 17th or August 22nd or any other random day. Further, I didn’t want to set a simple achievable goal because simple achievable goals don’t have staying power – they won’t usually be powering you years down the road. I wanted to create something that could be applicable forever (in theory) and wasn’t situation dependent, since I don’t know what the future holds.
So I was iterating on how to approach something that didn’t fail my test of timelessness and provided opportunity for growth. And decided to pull together a bunch of ideas I have picked up and developed over the years but have never prioritized or intentionally measured myself against. Doing this forces a reckoning. I choose 10 as my limit, just because, as my limit. Maybe I should have forced it down to 5, time will tell if 10 was too many – I’m certain it won’t be too few.
I also decided they needed to be choices made to drive better quality outcomes. It’s easy to be aspirational in ideas but I wanted to express each as a counter to something, so I was being clear with myself of what I was trying to improve upon/from. Quality outcomes is a tricky idea in personal growth, but generally what I mean by it here is when deciding something will the life I live be better by one outcome over the other, and better (for me, at least) means: what I do is of higher quality, I do it with less stress (but not necessarily less effort), and it is beneficial to life goals. I get that it’s sort of soft, which gives me pause but I don’t think there is a hard answer without over-engineering it.
So my goal in developing this list is to create some set of limited choices to apply when living my daily life, and especially when making decisions (not even big ones, just normal day-to-day choices) that I think should lead me to higher performance (i.e., quality outcomes.) Will it work? I don’t know, but I think it’s worth a try and it gives me something to regularly reflect back on.
And reflecting back is a challenge, because frequently we don’t have anything to measure ourselves against. We ask “how are we doing” but there is no real answer because there is answer to “compared to what?” So throughout 2026, I’ll be asking myself “did I make good choices this day/week/month based on these concepts and do I see my outcomes over that time as helping or hindering my life goals relative to the last period?” I’m not 100% sure this will work as well as I imagine/hope it will, but I’m willing to try. And I’ll adjust based on what I learn – but I will only do so explicitly (see # 10.)
So this is personal, I share it because it helps me hold myself accountable – I put it on the internet, I can’t really lie to myself about it – but also to let other borrow from it and build their own set of choices aligned to their life goals. And maybe one day I’ll write about how I think of life goals and why I think they are critical to a well-lived life.
1. Be a realist, not an optimist or a pessimist.
See the world as it is, account for constraints, and act from evidence rather than hope or fear. Optimists and pessimists both suffer from delusions that hold them back or lead to failures. Realists deal in facts and principles, not hopes and fears.
2. Preserve optionality whenever possible.
Prefer choices that keep future paths open over those that eliminate future options. Make choices and do stuff, but ensure your plans have alternatives that remain realistically viable. Or, go ahead and walk-through the door but don’t let it close behind you unless you have another path out – burning your ships might be bold, but it isn’t really smart.
3. Separate signal from noise deliberately.
Reduce reactive information intake and prioritize primary sources and first-principles thinking. Reject analogical thinking, focus on raw facts/data and first-principles thinking.
4. Design systems instead of relying on willpower.
Assume motivation will fail and build structures that work even when it does. Things without a documented structure, schedule, plan, etc. are sure to fail – our brains aren’t that good, sorry.
5. Write to think, not just to remember.
Externalize ideas and decisions so they can be examined, tested, and improved. Write a LOT. Again, our brains aren’t that good, paper (or OneNote/Notion/Apple Notes/etc.) doesn’t forget.
6. Assume incentives drive behavior.
Interpret action, yours and others, through incentives rather than intent or moral framing. Want to change a behavior? Change the incentives.
7. Reduce complexity before increasing effort.
Remove unnecessary decisions and friction before trying to work harder or faster. Complexity increases effort/stress while reducing quality, simple/minimal approaches gets better results with less stress.
8. Plan for reality, not aspiration.
Calendars/schedules that assume perfection produce inefficiency, stress, and shallow outcomes. Quality over quantity: Detailed planning with lots of slack maximizes quality results.
9. Seek asymmetry over balance.
Favor models, plans, and actions with limited downside and meaningful upside instead of evenness. Balance is almost always a bad thing in everything other than diet and exercise.
10. Update beliefs explicitly, not implicitly.
When evidence changes, state what changed and why rather than quietly drifting. Be intentionally open to the idea that you are wrong about everything so you can be fully open to changing when you learn new facts, and acknowledge (at least to yourself) that you have changed your mind and why.