I like New Years Resolutions, But for most of my life I wasn’t very good at achieving them.

This year, for the first time ever, I remembered what my resolution even was (get a new job) at the end of the year and I actually achieved it.

Why?

  1. It was simple enough to actually remember. There was also only one.

  2. It was specific. I could actually know when the goal was achieved. When my paycheck had another company name on it, I was done. Boom.

  3. It was really important. It took a long time to convince myself, but I realized that I needed to make a change.

  4. It was urgent. Even though it took a long time, I felt compelled to work on it every day and week.

SSIU is not a catchy acronym like SMART. But in my personal experience SMART goals are so complicated to write well, I often don’t remember them after a week.

In fact, an acronym might even be unnecessary in the first place. If a goal is simple, the specificity, the importance, and urgency take care of themselves.

Simple is not only enough, simple might be better than smart.

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Friends,

If you follow my work you might be interested to know my resolution this year: publishing this book. It’s drafted, but it still needs to be transcribed, edited, laid out, and shared.

If you have advice or encouragement on how to do this, I would love to talk with you.

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Why we don’t reflect