Here are my top six new year's resolutions for 2023. #6 Take more breaks. Often I find
I really just want to push through whatever I am working on, putting in more hours, but from
what I've read and just experienced myself. It typically just pays to step away for a bit from
what you're working on, go take a walk or take an even longer break. Some of the best ideas i've
ever come up with have been when i'm not working, when i'm in the shower, i'm on vacation, etc,
#5 Focus on Strong Ties - This idea comes directly from a few podcasts I listened to over the year
as well as a blog post from Scott Galloway in December that pointed out the number of close
friends people have, in the US at least, is in decline. As more of our lives have become digital,
I found for a lot of people, myself included, it's just become very easy to get sucked into
using a device too much, scrolling through feeds, and just absorbing content. The more time you
spend doing that, the less time you're going to have to spend on your friends and family,
those strong ties. This year, I'm going to stop engaging with people through social media,
for strong ties, I'm only going to engage with them digitally, through text messages,
or for my brother for example, who doesn't live nearby, through video games playing online, things
like that. For most of my strong ties, I'm really going to try hard to do things more in person.
#4 Focus on Mental and Physical Health - this is one i do every year, but since the pandemic,
I've become much more attune to my own mental health, keeping track and paying
attention to my own mindfulness as much as i keep track of my cardio and other exercise.
#3 Read more books and articles - I just got into the habit of scrolling through Twitter or
a newsfeed and I just keep scanning headlines, and I'm not even spending much time reading articles
or specifically deep reading, which actually has some pretty beneficial impacts to your
ability to learn and retain information. So, what I did this year, first, I got rid of social media
apps to scrolling feeds, they're just designed to suck your attention and they don't have an end.
For articles, I now use an app called Feedly, its an RSS reader I connect to
publications I subscribe to and then send those articles to my Kindle.
Books historically have always been a struggle for me. I always felt like I just didn't have
the time to sit down and read a book. As I started looking at my habits and patterns
a little bit. I was like, hmm, I actually probably do, I'm probably lying to myself
saying I don’t ever have time to read a book, and I need to change a couple of things. The
first one I did was banning my smartphone from my bed. Doing this has saved me so much time
that I can now allot to reading. I now charge my phone on my desk, and just that friction,
one, means I get to bed on time, about the same time every night now and I have about
30 minutes before I go to bed for reading and about 30 minutes when I wake up in the morning.
But then I needed a device that would solely allow me to focus on reading
and that's where the Kindle comes in. or any e-reader technically, I just happen
to buy a Kindle Paperwhite, which I’ve also reviewed on our channel. The Kindle
is a distraction free reading experience. No notifications, no distracting apps,
you can just focus on reading books and articles and the screen is nicer on the eyes too.
Since doing just those two things, I was able to read nine books this past year,
that's nine more than i read in the year before number
#2 Re-evaluate
Your Relationship with Social Media - Social media is pretty much designed to keep
your attention for as long as possible because it's an Ad-driven ecosystem. And on top of that,
liking posts and commenting on people’s photos, can give you a false sense of connection,
it’s not the same feeling as when you go out to dinner with a friend face-to-face. So,
if you want to reclaim some of your time this year and generally feel better, I'd start by trying to
delete all of the social media apps off your phone. And to keep up with your close friends,
text them instead. That's what I've started doing and honestly, I've never felt better.
#1 Notification Cleanse - This is something I think everyone with a
phone should do at least once a year. Go into your phone settings app, go to notifications,
and then just scroll through every app you have notifications turned on for and then ask yourself,
do i really want Notifications from this app? Have they been worth interrupting my focus? For me,
I find the answer is almost always no. I do not want to be interrupted
by notifications from this app, so i disabled the notifications for that app.
In general, the apps that I keep notifications on for are text messaging apps and delivery and
shipment notifications. That's it. Even then, the text messages I get from family and friends,
sometimes can still be very distracting and interrupt my focus. Make sure you take
advantage of Do Not Disturb on your devices when you’re trying to focus.
Now I know I’m just one person picking 6 things 2023 new years resolutions,
but let me know, what you’re planning to focus on this year in the comments below.
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what we do, click that join button below. For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder, thanks for watching.