Your Theme

That's what I'm doing right now; this is my Winter of Writing from the Year of Art; it's been going great so far

Andrei Tenescu

nice ♥

This is great! It's along the same lines of an article I wrote about applying this concept to money. https://www.moneyhealth.blog/post/goal-free (if links aren't allowed, I apologize).

Money Health

What do you think of adding sub-themes to your themed year, like let's say the "year of health" has a "spring of less", a "summer of beauty" and a "winter of reflection" whatever those mean to you in the context of health. Is that too much?

Martin Engelmann

I need a "Hippie-dippy, lovey-dovey, huggy-wuggy, fuzzy-wuzzy." CGP Grey wallpaper. Or T-shirt

❤️❤️

I have been saying that new years' resolutions are nonsense for years, but never had a good answer to replace them. This new year, I set some "New Decade Intentions", which are almost exactly along the lines of what you describe as themes, but over a decade instead. (The idea was that these are things that I do really want to work on *very* long term, like health and creativity.) "Intention" also seems more active and direct than "theme", to me, but the extent to which the particulars of the language used affects the outcome is, I'm sure, very specific to the individual. As time goes on, I think I will try to think of these themes as something long term, yes, but more on the season scale, as you suggest. But we'll see. Perhaps longer time scales just work better for me. Thanks for giving me a resource that I can show others to explain why I don't like resolutions!

h2g2guy

“Year of Yes” is the theme I came up with a few months ago. I’ve been allowing my schedule to fill up with more social events, and have been investing more heavily in a side gig. All this despite my natural risk-aversion. If you care, my side hustle has gained significant inertia (relatively) in just the last 4 months, and I met someone 3 months ago who I am now in a committed relationship with. My theme undoubtedly helped these things along. There is a very black-and-white difference between who I am now and who I was just this last summer. Thank you for the influence you’ve had on my life over the years.

Eddie Luttrell

I've been loving the Year of ____ method ever since you first talked about the Year of Less on Cortex. Happy to see the idea of it making its way to the YT channel

Mateen Kasim

I like this idea a lot.

Julia Allen-Hesse

Your wordsmithy and visual accompaniment is stellar in this video! You've definitely honed your skill over the years :)

Please make wallpapers of Grey sitting on a bench in the park.

I started thinking about this when you talked about themes a year ago on Cortex and this is the first year I actually set one. It's an amazing way to contextualize change. Thanks for the idea!

Andrew Nielsen

Summer of Grey ; )

CGP Grey

I started using my cortex theme journal this month and set two themes, Year of Magic and Year of Transformation. The magic comes in because I have found myself growing very cynical and angry at all the bad things happening in the world, and I want to let in some light and fun, so far this has really helped me to make decisions based on "is this thing serving to bring me joy and fun or cynicism and frustration"? I am adding in things like joining a dungeons and dragons group and letting go of things like checking the news regularly. The year of transformation is due to having a fairly large life transition coming up this spring, and it helps to remind myself to be patient for the change and to be looking for opening opportunities and taking my time to assess each one instead of jumping on the first thing that comes along. So far this has been really helpful, and I have found the journal to be a lovely tool to track and reflect on these themes.

Once again, you are brilliant in distilling food for knowledge into chewable bites. Thank you so much.

Hey Grey, just listening your 2020 yearly themes podcast and learned about your new video business model. Instantly wanted to support because your videos are some of the best on the youtubes.

Martin Engelmann

A theme for the season? How about the Summer of George? :)

Great video Grey! Loved it. I haven't made any NY resolutions in many years due to the high failure rate. I pick an idea (theme) whenever it occurs (can be any month), decide if I have the energy, will and resources to head that direction and start moving. To lose weight I said to myself, "Can Grey be right that skipping breakfast is a good thing?" After researching "intermittent fasting" and how eating only 2 meals close together (within 8 hours) has immense benefits, I started my journey and lost almost 20 pounds in 6 months. Thank you CGP Grey for your wonderful videos and even for your apparently on-the-surface-silly comments (like breakfast is useless). Can't wait for more videos!

I. Syed

I usually avoid new years resolutions for similar reasons (wound up with one this year because I need a certain weight loss to happen before some surgery can happen). If I set too specific rules for myself, I rebel against it almost immediately and nothing happens (this is a real bad reflex when the rules are 'spend very little so the bank doesn't get mad at you'). For me, what's worked is slowly moving from one thing that fulfills my needs to something else that *just about* does it, but is healthier. Like, I moved from soda to a certain light soda that tasted the same, then down to sugar free squash with enough flavor concentrate that it didn't matter. I moved off of ordering junk food by swapping to fozen pizzas from the supermarket, then on to chicken and potatoes or something similar. Both these things also turned out to be cheaper, which I used as my main motivator. 'Do it to be healthy' didn't work for me, but 'Do it so you can buy moar vidja gaems' did. I don't know if that kind of thinking might work for your brain but I thought I'd give my two cents :)

Kat B M

As somebody who's basically treated New Year's "Resolutions" in broadly this way my entire life, this is the first time I'm discovering that other people (presumably) ROUTINELY set themselves concrete goals (lose X kilos or whatever) as yearlong personal objectives!

Dan Q

I love this kind of content from Grey. I think that's what's really impressed onto me with his work. More so than other contenters. I tried reading Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith from a Hello Internet recommendation and found it tedious, but Kindle saw my try it, and recommended Nir Eyal's Indistractable which I loved.

Max Roberts

I wonder if... For me - the issue of resolutions is that I will inevitably have a moment of ego depletion, if you'll excuse the old paradigm. Times when my ego simply can't force my id to do what I had resolved to do. And then, as you say, it has failed and the whole thing has gone to shit. However, a new issue rises with a "theme" , which would be procrastination, an even bigger monkey on my back (check out the WaitButWhy on procrastination). When I know the right choice given a situation and a theme, I will actively avoid doing that thing, in which case the theme will have the OPPOSITE effect. This seems like an idiotic self-sabotage, but then, well.... I don't know. Maybe the theme-idea of it coming down to lots of small choices will avoid the procrastination.

Henrik IR

Happy Lunar New Year :)