Doing Less in 2025
I started 2025 by making small but impactful changes. I always planned on doing these things, but it just happened to coincide with the new year.
No More New Apps and Nonsense
First, any apps or organizational systems I had in place on December 31 are what I'll use in 2025. Getting sucked into the "productivity trap" set me back quite a ways in getting actual creative work done.
For instance, the notebooks I bought (and had monogrammed) at Shinola are how I'll get my planning and creative writing done this year. No random move to a shiny new app. No buying another typewriter on a whim. How I plan and write today will be how I do so by the end of the year. (I will still use Obsidian for digital hoarding of recipes, albums to listen to, etc.)
No More Unnecessary Distractions
I got rid of my Apple Watch. The Oura Ring 4 does everything the Apple Watch does for health but a million times better while measuring stress levels. What the Oura Ring doesn't do is ping me about stress-inducing minutiae throughout the day.
Since I did this in December, I've kept my phone out of reach for hours out of the day, and my resting heart rate went down a lot.
Consume More Good Content
I used to read hundreds of books a year. That fell off sometime last year, and it's important for me to pick it up again. I switched to a Kindle Paperwhite for my reading and already finished one book this year. (I'm in the middle of another that I want to quit halfway, but won't because it'll likely be a "big book of the year.") I carry my Kindle and iPad Mini (for comics) everywhere, along with my notebooks, so there's rarely a moment where I'm not afforded the chance to create something or read something.
I also intend on listening to a new album a day — yesterday was Whirr's Raw Blue — and watch more movies. I forgot how much I love watching movies and TV shows, but I did decidedly little of either last year. (For the sake of transparency, I doomscrolled the news instead.)
No More Procrastinating — Unless It Makes Sense
I decided that this would be the year I stop procrastinating while also building in room for intentional procrastinations. While this means getting to inbox zero, not being late on tasks, and so on, it also means doing the creative work that I (always) wanted to do — and then locking it in a time capsule for some time.
As an example, I wrote a novel in 2023 and intentionally put it out of sight in 2024. Because I had walked away from it for almost an entire year, I had the chance last month to reflect on it and figure out ways to improve on it. This led to the outlining and start of an entirely new addition to the novel — an experimental second half that didn't exist a year ago but now makes perfect sense and only materialized after time away from the work.
Generally Do Fewer Things
The most important thing I committed to this year is to be more intentional with my time and do less. I have these things with me everywhere, sure, but I can also just do nothing. I'm trying to be more present, see more friends more often, make my schedule less busy, and take time to do nothing at times of high stress. I've never really been okay with doing nothing until now, which may be a slightly controversial thing to say when I originally posted this on LinkedIn — a place that champions "do everything all the time always."
These are not big changes, but impactful ones. I don't give a lot of power to a new year, but it's perhaps as good of a time as any to start. I'll also keep this newsletter current enough to the point where it feels like it's not an afterthought.
Here's to an interesting 2025.