January resolutions

TTL 50

If you read what I wrote last year, you know I generally dislike New Year’s resolutions.

My argument was simple: if something is worth doing, you should start doing it immediately, not wait for a calendar date. Waiting for January 1st is just another form of procrastination.

So, it is with a healthy dose of irony that I admit I have set three specific resolutions for this January. 🫣

To be fair to myself, I did not wait for the date. I simply had some time to think between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and the timing coincided.

I’ll call them “Coincidental New Year’s Resolutions” 😉

But more importantly, these are not “resolutions” in the traditional sense. I am not promising to change my life.

Instead, I am treating January as a setup month. I am using these weeks to fix my environment—both digital and physical—so that for the rest of 2026, I don’t have to think about it. I can just execute.

Here is what I decided to change, and why.

1. Breaking up with the owl

My first resolution was born out of a moment of anger.

On a Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, I was in the finals of the Diamond Tournament, and I wanted to win. To do so, I spent the day racking up 7,000 points on Duolingo.

The problem was, I wasn’t learning Japanese as I intended: I was doing middle-school level math lessons because I could do them with my eyes closed to farm points faster.

I realized the app had ceased to be a learning tool and had become a video game.

I had an 832-day streak; I was enslaved by the owl.

That’s why we’re breaking up: gamification is fine, but when the game overtakes the learning, you have lost the plot.

So, on January 1st, I decided to break my streak.

I turned off notifications and moved the app off my home screen. I decided not to open it for 31 days. I know Duolingo is currently emailing my friends asking them to donate “freezes” to save my streak. I told my friends to ignore them.

We’ll see whether I’ll give it another chance this year 🤔

2. Locked my Second Brain toolkit for the year (at least)

Over the past few years, I changed my productivity apps every few months.

New tools pop out every week, even more frequently with AI, and the temptation to try the shiny new thing is strong. But let’s call it what it is: procrastination.

It is the same trap as the person who reads twenty books on how to do something before actually doing it.

I thought about photographers. The best photographers often use the same camera for years. They know it so well that it becomes an extension of their hand. They don’t have to look at the menus. The tool disappears, and only the work remains.

So, I made a deal with myself. Whatever Second Brain toolkit I was using on January 1st, I would stick with for the entire year of 2026 (at least). No switching.

This might surprise some people, but I chose Notion. It is not perfect, none of them are, so I needed to decide what principle I’d use to compare them, and I decided that going forward, I want to reduce my tolerance to bad design as much as possible. Of all the alternatives, Notion is the one showing it’s built by a team that cares deeply about every detail.

This matters because the tools we use shape how we think. If I tolerate sloppy design in the apps I use every day, I start to tolerate sloppiness in the products I build. I want to hold myself to a higher standard, so I need my tools to do the same.

3. Finishing the Environment

The final piece of the puzzle came from a message our CEO, Matt Mullenweg, sent out right before the holidays:

What’s something in your environment that’s keeping you from doing the best work of your career that you can change in January? This is broad, could be something about your home setup, or the structure of how we work. Pick something you can start and finish by the end of the month.

I moved into my current home office in October. It was functional, but it wasn’t finished. I had ideas for a printer setup, a fitness corner, my workshop, and a dedicated table to frame photos. But they were just ideas, and I still had boxes everywhere.

So, I am using January to close the gap. I set up the printer. I set up the gym rack. I got the extra table.

The goal is to reach the end of the month of January with an environment free of friction. I want to walk into this room and have everything I need exactly where it should be.

The Common Thread

If there is a theme to these three decisions, it is the removal of cognitive load.

I broke the Duolingo streak, so I stopped worrying about the game. I locked my software choices, so I stop wasting energy looking for alternatives. I set up my office, so I won’t trip over unfinished projects.

We often think of resolutions as adding new behaviors. This year, I am interested in subtracting the noise. I am spending January building a stage so that for the rest of the year I can focus solely on the performance.

What about you? Is there a tool or a friction point you can eliminate this month?

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I also publish on paolo.blog and monochrome.blog.