A New Year, A New Theme

2025: Year of Bias towards Action

Prompt: A wizard who has set a yearly theme directed towards action (I’m pretty bad at prompting image models rn, but here’s one I thought looked badass)

New Year’s Resolutions don’t work

I expect this is not news to you. Most new year’s resolutions are dead by the time the calendar hits February. Even my particularly-dense past-self noticed this phenomenon:

Baibhav from the past was wrong about a lot of things, but not about this!

My best guesses for the abysmal success rate for resolutions are: unrealistic goals, poor preparation (for example, what to do if something goes wrong), relying on motivation alone, and an all-or-nothing mindset.

What’s the alternative?

Fortunately, there is a better solution in the market: Yearly Themes!

Please watch this illuminating video by one of my favorite youtubers - CGP Grey:

I’ll not rehash the video (watch it before continuing!), but let’s quickly discuss the main characteristics:

1. A good yearly theme is broad:

   1. A nice broad name for the general direction you want to navigate your life

   2. Unlike a goal, you actively do not want this to be S.M.A.R.T. The flexibleness serves a very important function, a theme can end up meaning something different at the end of the year from when you started.
      Say "Year of health" (which CGP Grey recommends as a good "starter" theme) might initially be to get a gym schedule in order, but may end up focusing more on emotional or mental health aspects.

2. A good yearly theme cannot fail

   1. You want your theme to be a guide, not a specific numerical value.

   2. Most new year’s resolutions fail due to being wildly optimistic and not having a plan in case things can go wrong (In other words, it expects that you can just press the “Try Harder“ button to accomplish all your goals)

3. For your theme, you want to find a word/phrase that resonates with you

   1. This is a subjective thing, what resonates with me might not vibe with you and vice-versa. Just know that it really pays to spend some time trying to find a wording you like

There is lots to like about this idea: from the replacing of a harsh goal with a gentler goal-adjacent-thingy, to the characteristic of a good theme being un-failable preventing common issues like failing with abandon (the line of thinking that leads to “Well I had a resolution to go to the gym every day, and I missed today, so I will just stop going“). Also interesting is how themes with words that resonate with you feel (& work) so much better than ones that don’t (“Words are tuning forks for the brain” damn).

Also, the computer-nerd in me really resonates to Grey’s idea of a theme being a background process running in your brain, nudging you in some directions rather than others.¹

I wish these cute little theme bots existed IRL

Hopefully, by this point, I have convinced you that New Year’s resolutions suck, and you should be doing Yearly Themes instead. I highly recommend doing some thinking and writing, to try to figure out a theme of your own, for the new shiny year 2025.

Now, let’s get to my theme for 2025 😁

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My yearly theme for 2025: Year of Bias Towards Action

(Let’s start with the one page format taken from Theme System Journal website)

Theme: Year of Bias Towards Action

One paragraph description:
A common failure mode of mine is thinking or preparing too much when I would be better served by just taking the action. I want to become the kind of person who actually does things. I also want to get better at noticing the points in my life where I do not even recognize that I can take an action, and take action on those. The goal is to train the habit of action and hence become the kind of person who instinctually sees problems and takes steps to resolve them.

Ideal Outcomes:

• I install "Bias towards action" as permanent mental habit/background process/Theme bot

• In social settings, I am able to notice a thing that needs doing, that noone else is doing, and do it!

• I do not get stuck by procrastination as much. Reason one is that this biases me to quickly go over the "getting started" hill for any task. Reason two is to protect against any perfectionist tendencies

• Aside: Year of finishing tasks/projects

  • Remember: one alternative name for this theme was Year of Doing (and Finishing)

Alternative names for the theme

Finding the correct resonant word/phrase for a theme is a pretty personal and time-consuming process. If you want to experiment with a yearly theme for the new year, I highly recommend spending some time on this.

To illustrate the point, and to highlight some secondary things I want from the year, here are some of the alternative theme words/phrases that didn’t make the cut:

1. Year of Action

   Long version: Year of Action (and Reflection, but not at the same time)

2. Year of Doing (and Finishing)

3. Year of Agency

   aka Year of “You can just do things”

4. Year of Momentum

5. Year of (Simple) Systems

6. Year of Initiative

7. Year of Becoming a Person who does things

8. Year of Tiny Experiments

I like all of these and feel like each one represents some aspects of what I’m hoping with this theme:

• For example, “Year of Action” is a very succinct one, but I rejected it for a very subjective reason - the single word “action” reminds me of action films, which is not the vibe I’m going for.

• “Year of Doing (and Finishing)” is really good too, particularly because it includes “finishing”, which I want to get better at.² The fatal flaw with this one is that it feels like just a general “work & finish more work” theme, and does not express the part of the theme where I want to become the type of person who takes actions I previously wouldn’t take.

• Another one, “Year of (Simple) Systems” I like because part of making this theme work will be setting up a bunch of small simple systems in my life, but I think this is so broad as to draw away attention from the thing I actually want to focus on.

I am really happy with the phrasing I ended up going with: “Year of Bias Towards Action”. I believe it very well represents the theme, particularly the aspect of change in pattern of thoughts where I want to introduce this bias in my thinking.

One of the ways I knew this phrase was “the one” is that this was the one I would gravitate towards in the list. Words are tuning forks for the brain, indeed.

Some Preliminary Ideas on Implementation

I have a lot of thoughts about this topic, and I will definitley be writing about those throughout the year. Also, as mentioned in the video, there is an aspect of yearly themes where they work just via the process of them being a salient background process in the brain during the year.

However, want to share some preliminary ideas I’ve had:

1. Rule of thumb: If I think of an action that would be good to take and I am not doing anything, just do the action

2. Rule of thumb: If I think of an action that would be good to take, but I am doing something else, have a frictionless way to capture the action down somewhere.

3. Have a regular set time for going through the captured list. For now, this will just be a Weekly Review Ritual

   • In the past, I’ve not had much success with weekly reviews because I always end up complicating the ritual by adding too many parts, and a long review is a surefire recipe for getting me to procrastinate on it.

   • So, I am planning on experimenting with a very minimal weekly review, namely the Plus Minus Next method by Ness Labs.

   • The only addition to that method I’m planning is to go through the captures over the last week

   • I will block some time in the same time every week for this review (will start with Saturday mornings, but might shift if other timings end up better, distraction-wise)

4. Rule of thumb: Schedule “Action” and “Reflection” time for all work. However, never do them at the same time, and always start with “Action” first.

5. Rule of thumb: Jump straight into projects without too much upfront research

   • Professionally, I fail by I spend a lot of time reading up and researching something when getting a working version and then iterating on it would've helped me make the thing better and faster. My new heuristic is to try to get a working version done ASAP

   • Personally, one example: I’d planned on joining a gym and I had planned to read a few books about weight lifting before that, most notably Starting Strength by Mark Rippletoe.³ But then the “Bias towards action” nudged me in the direction of starting immediately. As a result, I’ve joined the gym and am mostly just doing cardio right now, but I think the practice of getting a habit is important right now rather than literal muscle gains.

6. Rule of thumb: When I am overwhelmed due to a large number of tasks and uncertainty about which to start, just start with a random one.

7. Although I couldn’t fit it in the main theme phrase, one of the things I want to get better at is finishing stuff (as my colleagues who encounter my large number of open PRs always remind me). Not sure of what measures I will take for this, but I think it will involve setting some Work in progress limits (say, only allowing 3 WIPs)

That’s it for this post! Wish y’all a happy start to the New Year (hopefully with a theme of your own 😅)

References

References for the Yearly Theme System:
1. The best starting point: the video
2. Theme System Journal webpage

References for my theme in particular:

1. The main inspiration for this theme is Neel Nanda’s post “Become a person who Actually Does Things”

2. Steven Pressfield’s books “The War of Art” and “Do the Work” have also played an important role in helping me think more about this theme. I have included some relevant notes from his books in the footnotes below ⁴

3. visakan veerasamy
   ‘s “Do 100 things”

4. CommonCog posts in general and Action Produces Information specifically

5. … and a lot of other stuff I’ve read from writers across the internet and picked up by osmosis. (will try to update here when I think of more)

1. Editor Notes: I can’t get over how much I like this idea.

2. If you can think of a phrasing that includes this “finishing“ aspect in my actual theme, please let me know in the comments below, I would be very appreciative of any ideas.

3. By now, I expect you are starting to realize why I need to do this theme in particular 😂

4. Some relevant notes from Steven Pressfield’s book “Do the Work”:

1. Start before you're ready

   • Don't prepare. Begin.

2. Swing for the seats

3. In the middle of the project: do research now

   • Do research early or late (in the day). Don't stop working. Never do research in prime working time.

   • Soak up what you need to fill in the gaps. Keep working

4. Two stages to the actual process of doing the work: Act, Reflect. Act, Reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time

   • Pressfield has a twice-weekly meeting (with himself) which is the only time he allows reflection

5. Killer instinct: Ship the thing!

6. Start (again) before you're ready