Hello! 👋
I hope you had a wonderful New Year’s celebration over the past couple of days. 2021 was a looooong year, and I’m very much hoping that 2022 is going to be better for everyone 🎉
However, as nice a sentiment as that is, I have absolutely no control over the pandemic, the markets or anything else going on, so there’s not much I can do to improve 2022 globally. That’s why I’m going to spend the next year trying to make it better for myself and those around me.
In light of that, I’m going to make some resolutions, as you do. One interesting fact I heard about New Year’s Resolutions recently was that around 80% of them aren’t kept, so I’m going to try something a little different this year.
Instead of making resolutions that require regular commitment, like ‘go to the gym once a week 💪’ or ‘drink two litres of water each day 🚰’, I’m setting myself long, more flexible resolutions with a single end goal. That way, when it comes to the end of the year I won’t think ‘Oh, I only went to the gym regularly for about 3 weeks’. Instead, I’ll know that I accomplished all I set out to accomplish this year (hopefully! 🤞), and can focus on building on those successes next year.
Another reason for choosing goals rather than regular acts for my resolutions is motivation. Motivation isn’t something I necessarily struggle with, but when you’re trying to make a habit of something like going to the gym, it becomes very easy to give up when life gets in the way and you end up missing a couple of weeks in a row. By setting resolutions that culminate in a single end goal, I can be far more flexible about when I work on them, and if something comes up that means I miss a session, it’s no big deal. I can catch up. There’s no ‘catching up’ when you’re building a habit.
So, what does this all mean? It means that my resolutions this year all revolve around having a finished product. Well, not necessarily an actual product, but you catch my drift. Basically, my resolutions this year are going to be finance- and entrepreneurship-centric.
Anyway, I’ve been babbling for long enough. Here they are, in all their glory:
- Release my app
- Earn £10,000
- Reach 250 newsletter subscribers
Release my app 📱
This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a while, and only recently started working on properly. This resolution doesn’t assume that it’ll be perfect when it releases, but I want it to be functional and get it out into the world, because:
Done is better than perfect.
Once the app has been released, I can iterate on it and improve it. Things are never perfect anyway.
Earn £10,000 💰
This one is fairly self-explanatory. Regardless of how I do it, I want to make at least £10,000. And I’m talking profit, here. Making £10,000 after spending £9,500 doesn’t count.
Other things I’m not counting:
🧑🎓 Student loans
🎁 Gifts (birthday, Christmas etc.)
💵 Parental support (just in case I don’t quite make it, I still need to live!)
🖥️ Riverdog revenue (salary will still count)
📈 Stock growth or dividends (I reinvest them anyway)
Basically, this leaves me with working, the aforementioned app or profit from other business ventures. Do you think I can do it?
Reach 250 newsletter subscribers 💌
As you probably know, this newsletter is a very new thing, and this is the only resolution on the list that sort of falls outside of the ‘non-regular’ requirement I set myself up with earlier, as I want to write an issue every week. However, the subscriber number isn’t directly tied to that, so I think this is okay.
How will I do this? Well, I’ll probably have to post more on TikTok and YouTube and expand to other media platforms potentially. But the best way for me to get more subscribers is just to create truly useful content so that all my lovely existing readers feel compelled to share it with their friends who might just benefit from it (if you know people like that, the sign-up link is just waiting to be shared 😉).
Anyhow…
I’m curious, what are your resolutions for 2022? In theory, I should receive any replies to this email, so let me know! If you’re reading this on my website after-the-fact, you can email me anyway: isaac@isaacharrisholt.com
I really hope this email inspired you at least a little bit to set some goals for this year, but all that’s left to be said is I hope you have a fantastic 2022 and I’ll see you next week!
Isaac x
🔍 Discovery of the Week
My favourite discovery this week is a streaming service called CuriosityStream. Think of it like Netflix for documentaries but for like 15% of the price. Seriously. I paid £13.24 and I’ve got a year’s subscription, and the documentaries are really high quality. I highly recommend if you have an extra tenner lying around and want something to watch that’s slightly more beneficial to you than watching Friends for the fifteenth time this month.
🎿 Off-Piste
📚 Book – The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. This is really a psychology book in the guise of a self-help book. It’s a fantastic read that introduces you to the concepts of Adlerian psychology through the medium of a conversation between a ‘Youth’ and a ‘Philosopher’. Honestly, my words aren’t doing it a lot of justice, so just go and read it!
💻 Tech – Elgato Green Screen. For those of you interested in any sort of video creation that involves a green screen, this is probably the most convenient one out there. It’s a good size and just sits in a metal tube when not in use. There’s no setup faff as you just have to pull it up when you need it, and push it down when you don’t.
👨🏫 Educational Video – One Simple Habit that Changed My Life by Ali Abdaal. The video explains the idea of ‘speed listening’ – the concept of listening to things at 2x speed – and how it impacts the amount of content you can consume within any given amount of time. Since we don’t actually take everything we hear in anyway, might as well get more through our brains, right?
