How to Stick to your New Year’s Goals

Hey friends,

I wanted to share some thoughts on new year’s resolutions. It’s the final week of January, and even though we’ve all set goals for the new year, it’s now the time of year when they start to slip. We start to forget about them, we probably haven’t looked at them in around 2 weeks, and the enthusiasm and inspiration we had on Jan 1st has now faded into the background of day-to-day life.

Earlier today, I hosted my second free online weekly review workshop – this is something I’m planning to do every Sunday. If you’re interested in joining the next one, you can join here (it’s free).

The first prompt for the Weekly Review is: “Write down your top 3-5 goals for the year”. When I saw that prompt come up in the slides I was sharing for the workshop, I thought: “Whoah! That’s a great idea!” (if I may say so myself). Because until that prompt came up, I’d actually totally forgotten what my main goals for the year were, and I’ve been absorbed into the hecticness of the past week.

But writing them down gave me a sense of “oh yeah! These are still important to me” and helped me prioritise what I want to do this week to take one step towards these major goals. I got the sense from the live chat that others found the exercise valuable as well.

In case you’re interested, the other prompts for the Weekly Review are as follows:

1. What are your top 3-5 goals for the year? Don’t just think about them – please write them down 🙂
2. Review the previous week’s accomplishments
3. Review the previous week’s challenges. In what ways did you not act in line with your intentions for the week? What felt particularly hard or challenging this week? And what would you like to change (if anything) next week?
4. Look ahead to the next 2 weeks and see what’s coming up. Do you need to create any calendar blocks, or any todo action items based on this?
5. Choose your top 3 outcomes for the upcoming week – if the week ahead was going to be a great week, what would be the top 3 things I’d accomplish? Schedule time in your calendar to work towards those outcomes.

You’re more than welcome to go through these yourself – takes around 20 minutes (ish) to do each week. But if you’d like some accountability, facilitation and Lord of the Rings background music while doing them, you’re welcome to join me at the workshop next Sunday (it’s totally frree).

Have a great week!

Ali xx

PS: If you’ve read my new book Feel-Good Productivity, then I would LOVE it if you’d be able to leave it a review! It makes a huge difference to authors and I’m super keen to hear your thoughts 💙

🌱 Giving What We Can

January is a great time to reflect on what really matters to us, and think about ways that we can make a positive difference in the world. Giving What We Can is a really cool organisation which can help you do just that.

A decade of charity research has shown something amazing: the best charities can have 100x more impact per dollar. So, Giving What We Can compile tonnes of research into recommendations for the best and most effective charities to donate to, so that you know that your money is really going to change lives. Some of these charities include the Malaria Consortium, which treats children for malaria, a disease that kills ~600,000 annually, or the Emerging Challenges Fund, which helps to safeguard humanity from catastrophes like pandemics and nuclear war.

Because charities like these are so impactful, you don’t have to give up your job or spend all day volunteering in order to make a difference. Instead, you can take the Giving What We Can Pledge. I did this back in 2019 and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Basically, by promising to donate 10% of your yearly salary to highly effective causes, you could have a hugely positive impact. You have more power to do good in the world than you think, and could prevent many deaths over the course of your lifetime.

​Check out the Giving What We Can Pledge for a great way to make a difference.

Thanks to Giving What We Can for sponsoring this issue of Sunday Snippets 🙏

❤️ My Favourite Things this Week

1. Book – I was lucky enough to get a pre-launch copy of Noah Kagan’s amazing new book Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours. I tore through it this week, and highlighted so much in it. If you’re looking to start your first business, it’s an amazing read. You should definitely get a copy – it launches worldwide on 30th Jan and it’s the best “how to start a business” book I’ve ever read (The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco would be 2nd place).
2. Podcast – I’ve been continuing to listen to the Billion Dollar Creator podcast… although as I write this, I wonder what these two favourites (Million Dollar Weekend and Billion Dollar Creator say about me as a person…). Anyway, it’s a great podcast. This week I listened to the episode about Building a Community and was blown away by the insights of the guest Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mighty Networks. One of my core goals for the business this year is to build a thriving “productivity” type community, so I’ve been absorbing all the information I can get on how to run thriving and vibrant communities to try and make it as sick as possible.
3. Podcast – I also absolutely loved this conversation between Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss. Some bangers towards the start about thinking in experiments, working out the real costs of doing risky things, hypothesis testing, and much more.
4. Fiction Book – I finally got round to reading The 11th Metal, a short story in the Mistborn series by my favourite author of all time, Brandon Sanderson. This is my usual public service announcement – if you haven’t yet read The Final Empire (the first book in the Mistborn series), it would be my biggest recommendation for this year. Trust me – you won’t regret it. It’s great on Audible too.
5. Physical Product – I have a real problem with buying too many backpacks in search of the perfect one. I recently switched my everyday carry backpack from the Nomatic Peter McKinnon 25L camera backpack to the Peak Design Everyday Backpack v2 30L. I used to use the 20L Peak Design backpack for years, but found that when I started carrying lots of stuff around, it didn’t quite fit everything I wanted. The 30L is absolutely prefect in terms of size – works as a camera backpack for everyday use, and also lets me squeeze stuff into it for an overnight stay as well. We’ll see how long this particular stint lasts 😛

🎬 My New Videos

💪 How to Achieve More While Working Less

This is the introduction of my New York Times Bestselling book Feel-Good Productivity, get your own copy here! ​

🛣️ Why You Feel Lost in Life​

Hey friends, this is the first in a series of videos about how to figure out what to do with your life. In this video, I’ll be going through a bunch of different techniques and journaling prompts to help you get some clarity on where you want to go in life. Enjoy x

✍️ Quote of the Week

From Superfans by Pat Flynn. Resurfaced using Readwise.