What Makes for a Good Year?
What Makes for a Good Year?
As we enter a new year, it’s worth asking what will make this a good one. Here are 3 common answers and one surprising truth.
This will be a good year if I have more good days than bad ones
So… in a given work week, you can have two full days of feeling off. Two full days a week can be unproductive days of poor performance and unfocus, bad moods or days that you consider a loss. That takes some pressure off needing every day to be perfect, right?
Or maybe even better is to say if you have an “off morning” can you turn it around in the afternoon to make up for it and have a good rest of the day? Jump in to a Cave, do the hard thing you were putting off, or cut yourself some slack…This will be a good year if I can achieve my biggest goal(s)
When you look back, you may not finish what you set out to accomplish. But that doesn’t mean failure. You were ambitious enough to set a goal– a huge challenge that at one time seemed impossible. Losing 20 lbs is not a failure even if your goal was 30. Starting a meditation practice is not a failure if your goal was to meditate twice a day. Many of the factors that determine whether we will accomplish our goals are out of our control. Sure you fell short, but you’re building a habit.
The opposite of achievement isn’t necessarily failure.
And if you’re looking for help on achieving an impossibly large task, remember that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. When you show up regularly and put in consistent effort, big things break down and get accomplished. That’s how books get written, dissertations get completed, trips get planned. That’s why we lead Caves over 140x/week.
This will be a good year if the overall feeling at the end is good
When you look back on a year, sometimes it’s just a feeling that it was a good one. You have some key memories with good people and feel proud of how you spent your time.
At Caveday, we’ve learned a lot about experience design and know that there’s something called the Peak-End rule. When you think about an experience–like a ride or a movie, or, yes, an entire year–people most remember the moment with the biggest peak emotional and how the end of the experience went.
If you can, think about curating and creating a peak moment for yourself later this year. You may plan a big trip or a celebration. You can think about the end of the year in terms of building yourself a positive experience unwinding for the holidays and spending it with friends or family. But the truth is, peak experiences are not always in our control and they’re not always positive. Sometimes a negative experience may stand out even more. In that case, you may need to build in a counterbalance– plan some regular alone time for yourself. We can turn a loss (an unexpected event or bad news) into a more meaningful experience when we can process and learn from it.
We can’t always plan our emotional peak and memorable end, but we can do our best to have an open mindset in place to better manage the outcome.
The good news I’m hoping to uncover for you is that having a good year doesn’t require you to be 100% every day. Far from it. This year can still be great if you just show up to do the work regularly & make incremental progress.
You can have a great year despite experiencing major loss, setbacks, and challenges.
You can always have a good year.
Besides, you deserve it.
Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.
Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.