New Year’s Anti-Goals

In January every year, by some unwritten decree, we all beat ourselves up over our past behavior and set goals for improvement—things like “be kinder to my neighbor, even when he lets his dog poop on my lawn” or “learn Chinese even though I hate Chinese food and I’ll probably never visit China” or “become a master pastry chef while losing 20 pounds.”

This year, let’s go wild and set some anti-goals—things we tell ourselves NOT to do. I’ll start:

1. Don’t compare myself to other writers.
2. Don’t let household chores distract me from my writing when other people in the household are perfectly capable of doing those chores.
3. Stop worrying about whether I’m good enough to pull off my latest work-in-progress. Lots of writers worse than me have gotten published, so if they can do it, I sure as heck can.
4. Don’t get distracted by shiny new projects until the current one is finished. Take notes for the new project so I don’t forget it, but don’t spend significant amounts of time on it.
5. Resist the urge to volunteer for stuff unless it furthers my own writing and/or career in a meaningful way. Saying “no” is very freeing!
6. Stop reading books I don’t enjoy reading. Commitment is for relationships with other people, not bad books.
7. Don’t wallow in disappointment. That’s so cliched. Everyone does it.
8. Don’t miss out on chances to meet with other writers—that support system is valuable for my mental health, my skill set, and my future opportunities.
9. Stop spending unreasonable amounts of time looking at social media while calling it “marketing.”
10. Don’t forget to look at this world with wonder, because wonder is where all the best stories come from.

What are your anti-goals this year?

[Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash]