Pre-New Year's Reflections

Every year, Stella is a little surprised by the new year. You know how it goes: the wind up to Christmas is so intense and you just try to get through it. And then suddenly it's a week later and you're looking a year-in-review retrospectives and thinking to yourself, "Was it just this year that Heston died?"

That said, I have been trying to keep a grip on things and not go too far astray from being productive, going to the gym, and the other routine things that make me feel like I have a degree of control over my life. I'm plugging away at the work stuff. Chug chug chug.

Because here is the thing: there is no substitute for just doing it. I can spend time hacking my systems and improving my to-do lists, I can color code my filing system, I can transfer action items to index cards. But the reality is if you do the work, it gets done.

And all the productivity experts agree. Well, Merlin Mann does. But you get my point: resolving to do better, and engaging in lots of meta organization won't get you where you want to go. Eventually you have to knuckle under and do the heavy lifting.