In this surprise New Year episode of the Connect the Dots podcast, Matt Ragland greets listeners and shares his reflections on the upcoming year. He discusses the importance of aligning his work with the kind of person he wants to become, drawing lessons from his 3‑ and 6‑year‑old sons about simplicity, play, and the joy of repeating small activities without over‑thinking. Inspired by these observations, Matt announces he will begin a daily (or near‑daily) creative habit experiment, starting with a 10‑day streak to see how sustainable it feels. He explains the “10‑rep/100‑round” mindset—trying a habit for a short, manageable period rather than committing long‑term. Finally, he promotes his 4‑week live productivity cohort, the Productivity Power‑Up, noting enrollment dates, a special early‑bird bonus, and the website where listeners can sign up. The episode ends with a promise to post another short thought the next day.
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Hi everyone, and welcome back to a surprise Happy New Year episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I just wanted to hop in real quick to your podcast feed in the middle of the day, I know, and just tell you Happy New Year. I'm looking forward to the new year with you. And one of the things that I'm spending time thinking about today is the theme and the intentions that I want to have for this year. I shared a lot of those in the past couple episodes on my annual review. As you know, I'm thinking a lot about who I am and who I'm becoming versus what I'm doing and what kind of goals that I'm achieving. I still have goals and things that I want to do, but it's very important for me to think about how the work that I'm doing is aligning with the kind of person that I want to be. And I've been learning something from my kids this past week, especially. They are 6 years old and 3 years old, both boys. As I've been able to spend more time with them over the past couple of weeks with the holidays and them like not being in school or like daycare programs, watching how much joy they have in things that I just take for granted. Like I was playing hide and go seek with my 3-year-old and we played hide and go seek for like 45 minutes and he hid in the same place every single time. And he would pop up and say the same thing. He's like, you found me. I was in my bed. And he would get off the same way. And then he would say, dad, go, go count again. And if I started to count too soon, he would say like, not yet, dad. But he literally for 40 minutes hid in the same place and said the same thing when I found him. And there's some of that that as an adult, you're like, okay, well, this is kind of pointless. I know where you are. But there's a simplicity to that, a slowness and an excitement to the little things in life that we just lose. I know I lose pretty easily. That desire to want to be entertained. And certainly, you know, 3-year-old, 6-year-olds, they both have that as well. But they just, they like doing things without the worry of what people will think. My 6-year-old, he has already kind of caught the bug of like, what will people think? Like, he doesn't like Mickey Mouse because his 3-year-old, his 3-year-old brother likes Mickey Mouse. So there's this thought of like, why I can't like this. But it, I really want to learn more from my sons this year and to be okay with things going slower, for things to kind of be the same and do the same thing time after time over and over again, even when maybe it doesn't make as much sense. So it's just something that I'm thinking about, something to consider this year. Wanted to send a quick daily thought out. I'm going to start doing this Every day, you know, who knows how long this will last, but at the beginning of every new year, I try to start a new daily creative habit and just see how long I can get it to go. You know, remember the 10-rep rule, the 100-round rule, that just try and do something like, you know, 10, 10 days in a row, see how it works, see how it feels for you. Even if it's not a daily thing, like maybe it's doing a new workout routine. Maybe it's just twice a week or once a week, but do it like twice a week, 5 weeks in a row. Give yourself the permission to try something out without it being an entire life commitment, because those feel really overwhelming, and then you feel bad if you don't make it. So I'm just going to try and do this like 10 days in a row to start the new year and see how it goes, see how y'all like it, see how I feel about it, see if there's an intersection between what you, the listener, likes and me, the podcaster, enjoys. So thanks so much for listening. I also want to let you know that today I opened up the doors, the digital doors, quote unquote, to the Productivity Power-Up, which is my 4-week live productivity cohort course. You can learn all about it by going to productivitypowerup.com. Doors are open through January 10th, but if you sign up this weekend through Monday, January 3rd, you get a special bonus of also getting my Most Productive Week Ever workshops thrown in with the, with the main course. So hope you enjoyed that. Would love to have you involved with it, but thanks so much for listening. I'm going to try and have another one of these up tomorrow and just a nice little thought to get you a nice little thought lesson, something that I'm thinking about that I think you'll find interesting as well. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.