Since hearing Myke Hurley and CGP Gray talk about “yearly themes” on the Cortex podcast, I try to go into every year with a theme that acts as the north star for decisions during that time. As I outlined in my 2021 blog post, it was a stressful year and I never really felt in the driver seat.

I reviewed the year using this Looking Back at 2021 planner from ink+volt (likely an inaccessible PDF) and it helped me greatly to see what the wins and possible improvements were. The exercise helped me to make sure that I did not only look back at the negativity of the year.

While I have a few specific goals for this year, the big umbrella theme is “The Year of Intent”. I noticed during my review how much of my time I waste unintentionally. Everything I do should have a clear intent, a clear outcome to make sure I use my time productively.

And that does not only mean “productively working” but also “productively relaxing”. I caught myself a number of times in the in-between state between work and free time, where I could not really relax. In the end, I was frustrated that I did not achieve a nebulous goal, but also that I did not properly relax.

In the last week or so, I did experiment with different tools (mostly Craft, Noteplan, Obsidian, and Things) to streamline my (work) tasks. None of the tools is perfect for me, but they each have some features that I like. I also experimented a bit with time blocking, but it can be hard for me to box-in my attention that way.

I’m also struggling with doing proper weekly and daily reviews of the material that accumulates over the week and day… In the morning, I really like to go directly into work because it is when I’m most productive and at the end of my day (which is usually around 7pm), I don’t have a review in me. Maybe I need to start midday reviews?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to being more intentional this year. I started on this blog by implementing webmentions and comments, so feel free to let me know about your theme or goals for the year to test out how that all works.