January Mixed Bag: How to Hack the New Year

My decorations are down, the refrigerator is cleared out and the local Scout Troop  has picked up our tree… I’m ready to hack the New Year! I love a good clean slate, and the twelve month horizon feels ripe with possibilities ready to pluck as they go by. I’m dedicating this month’s Mixed Bag to hacks. Specifically, a hack for achieving New Year’s resolutions, one for optimizing the 2025 holiday season and  a third for overcoming the hurdles of emotional decluttering. Oh, and also I was hacked recently…

Getting Hacked

Instead of ‘How To Hack The New Year’, I might have titled this post ‘How To Get Hacked’ as I have been immersed in the subject for almost a week. One morning I innocently clicked into an email I thought was from Meta and before I knew it a hacker had taken over my Instagram account. I’ve spent the last several days trying to recover my account, with unsatisfying results. There is still hope and with a friend’s help (who works for Meta) I should know within the next week if I am able to recover the account or if I’ll have to start over. Send good thoughts!

I now have new respect for anyone who has been hacked. I feel bonded with the heroine of one of my favorite books of 2024, Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge. Mrs. Plansky is the victim of a scam, which she refuses to take lying down. I am trying hard to channel her energy – wish me luck!

Resolutions: Goals vs Practices

Enough about my hacker, here is a way you can hack your New Year, specifically your resolutions. I think most people’s goals for the New Year fall into 2 categories. They are either lofty (I’m going to lose 30 lbs) or vague (I’m going to get fit) or both. If you have a New Year’s resolution you’d really like to get after (decluttering, anyone?) here’s the hack.

Don’t focus on the goal. If you have one fine, but set it aside. Goals are all about the results (the marathon, the weight goal, the decluttered home.)  What you want to target are the practices that lead to those results.

I guarantee that if you put your energy into small, consistent practices that relate to your goals, you’ll be in position to achieve them. Practices could look like running 3 times a week, eating 30 plants a week or decluttering one drawer/cabinet every week. The practice should be your commitment, not the goal. In fact, if you threw the goal out and only focused on your practices, there’s a good chance you’ll look up one day and fail to see your goal…. because you surpassed it!

Holiday Diary Notes

I grew up at Nordstrom and so I know that if you want to hack the New Year (or any big event, really), diary notes should be your best friend. Our two biggest events of the year at Nordstrom were our Anniversary Sale in July and Holiday in December. Those 2 events drove a significant portion of our annual sales and since they only came along once a year we put a lot of effort into improving them each time. A huge key to improving on something so important was keeping a diary in the moment of what we could do better next time.

I have adopted this practice in my personal life as well. Holiday looms just as large in my life as it did in my Nordstrom days. Every year I make Diary Notes detailing what I want to do differently next year. It’s important to actually document the ideas because I can’t trust my memory these days (shakes fists at Menopause). Here are my Holiday Diary Notes from 2024, if you’re interested:

• Make less cookies. I got hugely into holiday cookie baking during the pandemic and was baking 8-10 varieties and giving them out to friends and family. What I noticed this year is 1) the baking has started to feel stressful and 2) between the cookies we receive from others and the fact that my family is picky about which cookies they like a lot of the cookies go to waste. So next year – 2 varieties tops!
• It’s okay to skip some traditions/decorations one year. We don’t have to watch every holiday movie every year. I forgot to put up one of the decor items I love this year and no one noticed (except me!) People get sick and it foils some plans. I have learned not to let these things bother me if they happen. As I get older the years feel shorter, next Christmas will come soon enough!
• Simplify Christmas Dinner. We host a big fondue party on Christmas Eve and it’s my favorite of all our traditions. It’s also a lot of work. Then I turn around and host a much smaller Christmas Dinner the next day. In the old days my parents would host Christmas dinner. That tradition ended when my mom had a stroke so I’ve done both for the past 10 years. And what I’ve realized is that it’s too much for me and it’s stealing my joy on Christmas Day. So I’m taking a note from my best friend, who is in the same boat as me. She ditched her fancy Christmas Day menu this year in favor of lasagnas she purchased from a catering company. And she had a wonderful, stress-free Christmas Day! So next year I’m following suit!
• New tradition: Movie with the kids every night. This year we figured out that we got to spend a lot more time with our kids if we ditched the TV shows currently in our rotation in favor of movies. Each night we watched a movie and once it was over we took turns suggesting the next movie, which had to include one of the actors from the one we had just watched. It was fun and a novelty and our college + kids were into it. I loved it – winner tradition!
• Gruyere (& Emmenthaler?) at Costco. If I’m going to brave Costco at Holiday time I should absolutely get the 5lbs of cheese I need for the fondue party instead of paying an arm and a leg for it at Whole Foods. Hopefully Costco has Emmenthaler!

Coming Soon – Emotional Decluttering Course

I’ve heard loud and clear from my community that they would like to hack the New Year by finally decluttering all the stuff they’ve been afraid to touch. It’s the number one topic they ask me to make reels about and write about. And I get the most questions on this topic as well. So, I’m in the process of creating an online course that will include all of my knowledge and wisdom reagrding emotional decluttering. The subject is too big for a downloadable guide; I felt that the right educational format was an E-Course.

I’m really excited about it! I’m not going to share too many details, except to say it will cover everything from sentimental attachment to decluttering your kids’ stuff to waste and the Sunk Cost Fallacy. There are so many emotional hurdles that come along with decluttering; overcoming them will also give you the confidence to tackle other hard things in your life!

I’m hoping to launch in late January/early February, so stay tuned!

Well, that’s what I’ve got for this week. Let’s all get out there and be hackers this year, the good kind!