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Happy New Year, ya filthy animals!
And welcome to year three of “15 days to slow the spread”.
I hope everyone had a good wrap to 2021 and is excited about their plans for 2022. If you’ve got some time, check out the first Hop Monthly: December Update - Hop Monthly #1 so that you have a full sense of the series!
This month, our focus will be all about the coming year, and things that you can do to make it better. That is basically what the Human Optimization Project is all about!
I know that I am somewhat far out in my interest in reviewing the prior year, making new year resolutions, and setting goals for the coming year. As I did research in founding WeAchieve, many people told me that they simply weren’t into doing that. Maybe they had an informal process of taking inventory, but they more or less just carried on, I’m sure making some incremental changes as they went.
That said, I’m a big advocate of a more thorough process. By dedicating some thought to it, you can uncover a lot more about where you see yourself and ideas about how you can make bigger things happen. So my advice to you would be: give it a try this year! Even if you haven’t yet, use this weekend to do some review of 2021 and make some plans for this year.
One Big Thing:
As I highlighted New Year Planning last month, it’d seem a bit repetitive to highlight it again. But there is still time to Hop Into the New Year!
That aside, there are even low time commitment ways to help yourself improve in the coming year. Setting one or two simple goals can be a great catalyst as good ones provide some focus and purpose that the rest of your life can benefit from.
Some of the WeAchieve writings that I’ve ported over cover this topic well. It’s a great time to read:
Whatever you end up doing, I hope you have a great start to 2022 and wish you the best! For me personally, I love starting off the year with a nice long run. I’ve slacked a bit in recent years: after 4 straight years of going at least 9 miles, I only did a 4 miler in 2021. As I have a marathon coming up in a couple weeks, today seems like a great day to get out and do a nice 15-20 miler!
Three Themes:
- One: principles toward a cohesive worldview. I’ve been reworking my old One Daily Thought series under the title The Book of Principles. The goal is to unite the majority of those posts into a more cohesive series that focuses around providing a framing for how to view the world and how to act within it. There are nine posts so far, with more to come!
- Two: spice things up in 2022! I wrote a bit about experiments I’m going to try in the coming year (Try New Things in 2022) but you don’t have to be that formal. Consider any small adjustments you could make, or ways you can live more authentically. For my part: I’m being even more bold about ignoring (almost) all Covid theater, even when traveling back to the Northeast.
- Three: I’m using this spot as an open ask: what would you like to hear more about within the realm of Human Optimization? While it’s been great getting several hundred eyeballs on things, I’m still flying relatively in the dark as to what people are thinking about or trying to accomplish. Would love to hear about any questions, ideas, or resources that you find useful. Let us know!
Challenge for the Month:
A reminder on last month: pick out one thing that you want to get done in the next month, and write it down now and then complete it in December. Did you do it? Let us know! We’d love to feature some success stories in coming months.
This month, I’d like to challenge you to do one physical activity that you’ve never tried before. Feel free to interpret that broadly, whether that is trying to set a speed record for running or biking, picking up a new team sport or individual workout regiment. For me: I will likely try to start doing some kettlebell workouts. It looks like a fun way to bring in some weights to my predominantly cardio routines.
Closing Thoughts
I want to wish you and your family all the best in 2022. While the world is becoming more divided than ever, I hope that it isn’t coming between you and your family or your friends. While I can’t resist some comments regarding the ‘roni and the response, I do so in this capacity only because the response to the ‘roni has materially harmed the path toward living a better life for so many.
In any case, I hope that this letter and HOP as a whole has helped you in some material way in getting started for 2022, even if it simply helps motivate you, even a little bit, to go out there and do something marginally better than you did yesterday.
All the best,
Ben