Matthew Kelly argues against the ‘New Year, New Me’ mindset and advocates for realistic, achievable small changes to daily routines (e.g., swapping coffees, starting a subscription) that can be stacked into larger improvements over time. He emphasizes that incremental wins—facilitating conditions for short periods of deep work—are more effective than expecting instant personality change at the new year.
That's why gym memberships spike in January and everyone's New Year, New Me. But it's not going to be New Year, New Me. What it should be is New Year Better Me. What I mean by that is like realistic. Probably realistic, because I don't like that word. But like achievable changes to your existing routine, it's never going to be the case that you go from December 31st to January 1st. You probably wake up hungover like a lot of people, and even if you don't, you're not going to suddenly have a different brain. But if you can facilitate a small change, like getting on rainbow dust or Matcha or whatever, just starting a subscription, swapping out your normal coffee for something that helps you get in flow state, which actually does allow you to get an hour of deep work done, more per day, then that is what starts to move the needle. Stop calling it New Year, New Me. Because you don't be a different person, but you could be a better version of you. And that could start with a small change and you can start stacking wins, because actually, in a year's time, you could be a different person.
