This was the first year of my life where the New Year was not a big deal to me in the sense that I was not able to set aside a considerable amount of time to reflect upon the previous year and set goals for the new year because I was and still am too focused on the goals I have set from the previous year to set new ones or reflect on my accomplishments just yet.

First, I thought about why this was: Why wasn’t I spending the time to reflect and plan? Answer: I’m too busy with my current startup to spare time for a vacation.  If it isn’t adding value to my start up, I don’t have time for it.  I haven’t taken a vacation in 2014 yet and I don’t plan on taking one until the startup reaches a better place.

Then I realized what this means is that the “new years resolution” culture is largely due to the holiday season that leads up to the new years holiday: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years give you lots of free time in a short 4-5 week period during which you can pause your life and reflect and meditate and think.

Then I realized I do this every two weeks at least: I refocus my priorities, I evaluate them against my long term goals, and I make adjustments to my plans.  I constantly do this on a small scale daily but on a full scale bi-monthly.  This allows me to not get distracted and stay focused on my goals.

Therefore I concluded that the process of reflecting on what you did since your last reflection session and setting a plan of action for yourself should be on your personal timeline rather than on a timeline that isn’t yours.  Time moves without you, the calendar will tick whether you’ve made progress on your goals or not, whether you’ve remembered them or forgotten them, so don’t base your life on it because it isn’t related to you.  You want to reflect on your goals based on a function of your personal memory timeline: If I forget things after 3 weeks then I should refresh my memory of my goals every 3 weeks or less.

I think this is the reason why people’s new years resolutions don’t last: Because too many people ascribe to the culture of reflecting based on a calendar external to their personal life calendar.  Focus on yourself: How often do you need to be reminded? How often should you re-focus and reflect on your life?  Do it on your own timeline and you’ll see more success.

The person who reads their new years resolutions every day or every week for an entire year has a much higher chance of succeeding at meeting them than someone who never reads it again after making them.

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The Holocaust started because Hitler convinced an entire nation that a certain class of citizen didn’t deserve human rights.  That they were inhumane.  That we shouldn’t see them eye to eye.

In America, one of the first lessons you learn when you enter the city life is to ignore the homeless.  Keep walking, don’t make eye contact, don’t get harassed, don’t acknowledge them.  Sentence them to eventual death by poverty.

We need some humanity for the poor.

However, at the same time, we need humanity for the rich.  Too often when someone who is better off complains or expresses negative emotion, we the poorer do not emphasize with them or validate their right to have emotions because “they are richer, just solve it with their money. Try dealing with being poor: your emotions aren’t valid unless you’re poor.”  This is also wrong.  We need humanity not just for the poor, but for all of us.

We also need humanity for the middle class.  What often happens in the middle class is that they disrespect each other because they aren’t rich or poor so they don’t deserve a second thought.  The middle class then focuses on the rich and/or the poor rather than on each other.  Take care of those you’re in contact with, focus on your own life and care for others in your life.

In a previous post I said Skill is the Sum of Small Details. Building on this, we can conclude that with more skill comes more details and in particular the awareness of more details: While cooking beef you now notice the color of the beef instead of relying purely on the clock set by the recipe.  While picking up a cup of water you notice not just the shape of the cup but the material and temperature and adjust the strength of your grip accordingly.  

For people who lack that level of detail in their skill, they don’t notice.  And because they don’t notice, they don’t optimize.  The beef is done cooking before the timer has gone off because the cook didn’t notice the detail that the stove heat was set to one level higher than last time.  Someone crushes the cup because he or she expected it to be ceramic and heavy but it was actually paper weak.

As you become more aware of details, your personal skills improve and your own life improve.  However, when it comes to interacting with others, now you have more data to judge others with, and we all know that it is all too easy to judge other people: it is one of the most fundamental human natures we have.  As a result when someone else is cooking beef and they aren’t paying attention to the color of the beef but you have the skill to, then you will notice them doing it wrong.  If someone’s paper cup looks like something from origami, you know they haven’t adjusted their grip properly.

When you see these things, you can be critical or you can be appreciative.  You did see a mistake being made, but you also see correct decisions being made: the heat was on for the beef and the timer was set to the right time according to the recipe, or the cup was right side up and wasn’t flipped and liquids weren’t spilled in the process.  Rather than using your skills and awareness of details to find things that are wrong and criticize, use your skills and awareness of details to find things that are right and appreciate.

Please be reasonable in your appreciative comments.  “Nice, the recipe for the beef you chose is good” is a good appreciative comment.  “Nice, your beef is better than nothing” is a very unreasonable appreciative comment.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One final thing to note: be aware of yourself and the impression you give others. If you are someone who always criticizes then people won’t like being around you. If you are someone who encourages people, appreciates their good qualities and make them want to show their good qualities more often, they will want to be around you and both your lives will be improved.

Check out AttemptedLiving’s Life Education Curriculum, a collection of core knowledge everyone should have.

To find out when those posts, and other life education writing, are released, subscribe on the side! Follow on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, on Tumblr.