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- 05 Jan, 2026 *
Happy New Year, everybody! I had meant to post this in late December, when it was a bit more seasonally appropriate, but life intervened.
This past month, I came up with a method1 for doing new year’s resolutions that’s designed to help one feel a greater sense of accomplishment and reduce one’s chances of giving up on the goals you set for yourself. I call it the "leaf-and-branch" approach. The idea is not t…
Home Publications Games Links Projects Now Blog
- 05 Jan, 2026 *
Happy New Year, everybody! I had meant to post this in late December, when it was a bit more seasonally appropriate, but life intervened.
This past month, I came up with a method1 for doing new year’s resolutions that’s designed to help one feel a greater sense of accomplishment and reduce one’s chances of giving up on the goals you set for yourself. I call it the "leaf-and-branch" approach. The idea is not to treat your resolutions as a checklist with binary pass/fail outcomes, but to think of your resolutions like the branches and leaves of a tree, where each individual leaf constitutes a valuable contribution to the overall health of the plant.
Here’s what the system entails:
Start by creating several different categories of resolution that you’d like to set for yourself. For example, "improve health," "cultivate relationships," "do better at work," or the like. These will be your branches. 1.
For each category, devise several small(ish), concrete objectives you could attain that would constitute tangible progress toward that resolution. For instance, if the category is "improve health," viable objectives could be "drink two more glasses of water each day," "do three hour-long exercise routines each week," "use the stairs instead of the elevator at work," etc. Each of these objectives is a leaf for its respective branch. 1.
Now for the important part: If you succeed at meeting even one leaf’s objective, give yourself credit for the entire branch. This will help you recognize the significance of even the smallest victories. Feel free to do multiple leaves for the same branch, of course, but don’t punish yourself for failing to do all of them. One is enough.
Remember: Success is rarely all-or-nothing, and any progress you make toward your goals is better than no progress. Be kind to yourself in the new year, and avoid driving yourself crazy in the pursuit of perfection! Here’s wishing you a good 2026.
It feels probable that somebody else came up with this idea first, but I am unaware of any comparable system.↩