Why Your Resolutions Fail by January 15th (And How to Upgrade the System Instead)

Lombard? Oh, yeah. One, two, three. Wait, did you click it on three or?

I didn't. Okay. Sorry. One more then. One, two, three.

Hi, how have you been? Great. I am coming back from holiday PTO weeks, which were fantastic,

but it's like shifting into a whole nother gear. It's going from riding around

in like a convertible that you just cruise in to like a Formula One car overnight once you get

back into work mode. I think it was exaggerated for us too, because I mean, 90% of our company

was off like two weeks. The way the holidays fell this year, I think that hit a lot of people.

It was so nice. It was so nice. And not just that, but all of the side stuff too, right?

All the other websites I'm helping and like consulting on other things,

all of it just stopped, which was, yeah, needed. But now it's like, okay, hold on.

So nice. Well, welcome back everyone to Type A Unhinged, the podcast.

I'm Di. I'm Nate. And today we wanted to talk about

new year, new systems, but beyond the resolutions.

Really, we want to get out of that January 1st high, right? We're talking about,

I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to get all the things done. I'm going to be a better

person. I'm going to be so organized. And I'm going to be a better person. And I'm going to be

every day. And just like that dream, right? To that January 15th slump, where we're at,

we're halfway there right now as we're recording this. So it's kind of a vibe check

and really just like how we're going to get through it.

And I think, you know, especially for a Type A person, this hits home even more because we tend

to,

set high goals for ourselves and you walk out or walk into the new year with, you know,

some ambitious new year's resolutions. And then exactly like you said, January 15 rolls around

and you're burnt out. And they're so black and white that once you fail, you failed, right?

Like, so if your goal was to work out every day, what are the odds you're going to continue after

you failed? Because your resolution, it's like already, it's already done. And so I think,

I think what we want to talk about today is more about upgrading the system

versus coming up with some super ambitious resolutions. Because at the end of the day,

we're not changing our personalities.

I don't want you to change yours.

And I don't want you to change yours.

Do you feel the love?

Oh, man.

It's in the air. I think I have a great example about this, though.

Okay, go for it.

All right. So like Di said, we just came off of a pretty healthy PTO period over the holidays.

And one thing I was thinking about,

is we have to be so organized and execute quickly in our professional lives that I definitely am

not always the best of that in my personal life. And to expand on that, for example,

I have free time where I can hang out with friends, but I'm so bad at planning it out ahead

of time that all of a sudden, we're in the moment, I'm bored on my couch, and I could have easily

made plans, but I failed to plan ahead and schedule them, you know, four or five days ago.

Mm-hmm.

And as I was kind of thinking about that, you know, the first thought that came to my mind was,

well, my New Year's resolution should be, be a better friend, right? I should not leave

friends on read and forget to reply. I should reply right away. Or I should try to make more

of these plans ahead of time. Or even a realistic one, like one hangout such pre-planned a week with

friends, right?

Mm-hmm.

But the more I thought about it, the more I went down that path of that's pretty black and white.

Once I fail, it's just over. And am I really going to succeed at that?

Or as a type A person, is that ultimately just going to cause me more stress?

Yeah. You're just going to beat yourself up.

Yeah. And the anxiety of, I read this now, I have to respond right now, but I have a million other

things happening, like still not super realistic when you boil it way down. And so I took some of

my PTO days, and I built an app to help with this. And it's called The Hangout Spot, and I'm really

pumped. Definitely developing it live. So there are still some bugs I'm working out. However,

they're minor.

I'm so happy I'm in the beta. It's so beautiful. I have to say.

Oh, thank you. It makes me so happy. For all of you listening, the concept of The Hangout Spot

is this new social media app that's privacy forward, designed to promote both preplanned

and drop-in right now style hang sessions with your friends, but in real life, right?

So one of my big mottos as I was building this was the right to lurk. Me as a type A person,

as soon as that red receipt is sent, I now have the stress to respond,

right now or in a reasonable time because the system created that, right? Like it told them

I've seen it. Now I have to respond. So things like red receipts or even just being super anonymous

if we track it, it is anonymous. There is no directory to find friends. You have to get a

magic link from them. So again, just very privacy forward. But the whole idea is I want to hang out

with my friends. Maybe I know I'm going to be free Tuesday afternoon, so I can put it in there.

I'm going to be having a driveway fire Tuesday,

afternoon. I can select the groups that I want eligible to see this event. And then it just

shows up in their feed and they can RSVP as going, or maybe they hit maybe again to get rid of some

of that friction. They don't, they want to respond that they've seen it, but they don't know for sure.

So they're going to use that maybe button. It's, it's so great. I think you could even

use this at like conferences, like people that you don't know that you maybe want to meet up

with and you might not see them again, but that way you're not like exchanging personal

information if you don't want to. Right. Like you're not giving them your phone number or

right. So it's just like, Hey, we're going to hang out. There's some other people that are coming,

like, feel free to join. And you can have a bunch of different people that you don't even know

and they can join. And then it's like, okay, that was really fun. And then if you want to get to

know them more and hang out more than you can exchange personal information. So I love that

whole like privacy piece of it too. Absolutely. And I really ran with that too. I feel like,

like there is no direct messaging. We don't email, we don't even email you. The app doesn't email you

only thing it relies on is push notifications. Um, and again, to get rid of some of that friction

for your example of a trade show or a conference, it really doesn't even feel like you're downloading

an app or setting up an account. It's, it's a website. It's not even an app. It's a website

designed to feel like an app and you hit the sign in with Google button. So completely agree. I'm

glad you like it. So it sounds like you have your resolution handled. Yeah. And that was like the

intent here, right? Like I started out thinking I need to set this lofty goal.

Being a better friend. And at the end I played around, made this app and now I have 40 ish active

users in there and have already posted last minute. I'm on my couch playing video games.

Anyone's welcome to drop in and have had people show up. So I feel like this is a perfect example

of make sure you're not just creating this lofty resolution, but analyzing, is there a way to

upgrade the system instead? But I think, you know, there's many ways, many ways to go about this as

and I think like die with you since I've gotten to know you, I've watched your workload at least

double since we've met and I'm talking both professionally and personally. Uh, so

like you can't just engineer your way out of deadlines. Right. So I'm curious, like

so much, what upgrades do you have in store? Yeah. There's, there's just so much time in the day

giving. Of course. I wish there was more. Um, what am, what am I going to do?

Well, you know, if I could, I would build an app to fix my social life. Like you have,

maybe I'll just use yours. I don't have, honestly, I don't have too many, uh, too many

close friends, uh, because of how busy I am. And I like to focus on my family as well.

Um, but I, I try to, uh, come into the new year and go, okay, what did I have last year?

That was friction or that caused issues. Um, it could have been a process that I went

through. It could have been, um, just like a day to day thing that I'm just like, why

is that always there? And I never do anything about it. Um, like finding a place for something

can just like make everything feel better sometimes. So I have like the heebie jeebies

right now, because as soon as you said that I imagined my stack of mail, I have to file

away on my counter. Right. And how nice would it be if you had a place for that? That looks

good.

Nicer that like, or, or it's like organized in sections as you get it so that it's a little

easier to go through later. So just those little things, I, I try to think through that. I walk

through the house. Like right now I've noticed, um, because our kids are growing more, we do have

a, like a Sam's club membership. So when we get toilet paper and paper towels, there's just an

abundance of them. And we end up just like putting it in the sink, like the utility sink by the

washer dryer. Uh, yeah. And ours, we have a, a rambler.

With a finished basement. So ours is actually upstairs, which is very convenient because it's

where the bedrooms are. But like, I walk past that thing every day and I'm like, God, I need a spot

for that. So that will be one thing. I will create some sort of system, organize something there

that will just make me feel better. Yeah. Uh, this doesn't qualify for you because you have

a whole family living in your house, but I also have a Sam's club membership and I call those

the life-size pack. I am on my second year with the toilet paper pack I bought.

Oh, wow.

wow like literally they are life-size packs but you need it like who wants to buy that you know

still saving i'm saving more but you're still saving

yeah so that's that's one thing that i like yeah i guess what are some of the things then on your

list the that's the laundry room that's honestly one uh step one step two is is my office actually

i have okay i have um just basic wire racking over where like a closet would be because we

finished the basement ourselves um and i would love to make it look beautiful and have it be

a nice backdrop for when i'm on calls or something like this right and so i've been scouring wayfair

thought about doing it myself and i was just like you know what's gonna happen is you'll buy the

wood and you'll cut some of it and it'll sit in the for like three months because kids will have

tournaments or something

and then it'll be by the end of the year maybe i'll get it done right so gonna go the wayfair

route because that's part of the resolution i feel like is like you don't need to like over

like don't over don't overthink your limits right it might be it might feel really great to make it

myself but i know that i'm really not going to give myself the time to do it so i need to find

an alternative and it's okay if it's not like the dream that you were hoping for it's still a step

in that direction and i think that's exactly that's super important

one thing is everybody's doing dry january right now right and i feel the pressure i should do dry

january um but yeah but really like i mean new year's eve there was a champagne toast and there

were fireworks and i'm not gonna miss that and yes i could have drank juice instead with my kids but

i'm i had a special for that first of all like we were literally 30 seconds away and they're

passing out champagne and they go to my son i was like he's no absolutely not and had the

bring out some sparkling juice but um i i mean i still want to enjoy things like that and and go

to maybe a social happy hour or something and not feel bad about it or the one that's left out oh i'm

doing dry january and then other people feel bad like they should and then they have to explain why

they're not doing right like it's just a thing so rather than that one thing i want to do is um

create a habit tracker there's so many out there right but the ones i found unless i want to pay

which i don't want to pay extra um it it's like uh you did it or you didn't do it and then you're

and i want something more than that i want to i want to track progress and that's the whole point

of this whole like resolution right instead of having this resolution and it's done or not done

having something that's just through that you're you're getting better at something you're making

progress so instead of i drank i didn't drink it's i drank one drink with dinner or i had two

drinks when i went to happy hour i had no drinks today right like tracking that and showing

improvement versus

my brain is already going wild on how this could be orchestrated right i love this idea but it

doesn't even have to be just that that's one example another thing is like working out so

i used to not work out for the long i mean i was i was an athlete and then after having kids i i did

not make time for myself which is a horrible thing and a couple of years ago i finally did

and i got into a great habit of every day and again i knew i wouldn't get up and go to the

gym in the middle of winter and i was like i'm gonna go to the gym and i'm gonna go to the gym

right i want to have two kids that need to be at a bunch of activities it's really hard to

orchestrate along with everything else i really want to do so i do it at home and it's like i did

it today i did it tomorrow and i use body the odi and they actually have a built-in app for

macros and all of that so i don't need to track that one separate but um it's wonderful because

it's how many minutes that you've worked out how many days you worked out who your top person was

that you worked out with stuff like that and that really helped me stay consistent because it wasn't

like oh god i missed it and i was like oh my god i missed it and i was like oh my god i missed it

one it's like okay but i still did four this week and this is how many minutes even though i had

you know only four instead of five i still hit the same number of minutes that type of thing or i did

really well with my diet like it's not just about the scale you know what i mean yep so i'm i want

to find other ways to do that other than the thought of like the the non-dry january improvements

right um i'd like to orchestrate things like i've become a member of a booster club for my son's high

school and i'm chairing um the

auction gala that's coming up i literally have the first meeting this sunday and i've already been

sent spreadsheets and things and i'm just like already like oh my gosh there's got to be a way

to do this without having to like separately email and call every single one of these people

to try to get donations and you know that kind of thing i'm trying to figure out

ways right away that i can like engineer some more time to get myself back to work on other

passion projects right um because here i'm just like i'm just like i'm just like i'm just like

i'm just trying to give back versus like i'm really excited to do it not really right

right yeah so that that's what i like to do go around the house look at my systems one more

thing i can think of is oh my gosh my husband is he is type a he's a different type a than i am

okay i'm type a everything needs to be in its place he's type a yeah like there's three piles

they should be one and i'm like now i have to reorganize it right he's like trying to

this cycle yeah he's he keeps it tidy and all of that kind of stuff does not like the mess but

it's a different way of thinking about it right not every person is the same you can't lump us

all together even though we're both kind of type a um and he he's not a good calendar person he

will tell you that like this is not something that everybody knows this about him and i even

like literally yesterday was like hey can you remember to pick up our son's prescription

tomorrow and he had forgotten already a couple days

asked me remind me tomorrow and i was like well i don't want to now i have the mental load

that i have to add that to it to do hope that i see it because i'm in meetings all day right

and make sure that i remember to text him to remind him to go and get it and i as an elder

millennial feel really dumb for not having known this before but you can pre-schedule a text

message i have pre-scheduled emails i have pre-scheduled oh my gosh team's messages so

i'm not interrupting people during non-work time right

but i have not known you can do that and i mean maybe i did in the back

that was your first scheduled text 2005 oh god it's 2006 2006

first scheduled text i don't even want to know how long this has been a thing

um so i did the long hold i want to say i scheduled it at 11 and he responded to me

yep got it and i was so confused like why did he write yep got it when i saw it flash across my

screen i'm like

what is he talking about and then i remembered i had scheduled it so it was good thing i did

because i even forgot that is so funny i'm like debating whether i should say this or not

just say but my brother has scheduled my happy birthday text to be at 12 1 a.m for like the last

12 or 10 years and at first i thought he actually was still up because he's a night owl but then i

caught on so it depends on the phone but it's been around for a little bit sure

yep that's funny yeah never forget a parent's birthday again yeah i know there's no excuse

this year on their birthday you schedule it for next year there you go yeah you don't want it at

the same time every every single time so i'll be like why is i was at four oh three yeah that's how

i got on i'm like 1201 again for the third year in a row that's funny those are some really good

ideas die i also think it's funny i feel like we both like systemizing things and so we kind of

approach it the same way like

I for instance I recently made a system for decluttering my house I put a box in my garage

it's always there it has a place it's not labeled because I'm not that much of a freak but like you

know it's if it's not there I know and it's my goodwill box and that way I'm so scatterbrained

all the time that I just need to do things right now when I think of it and I always have this

problem of like oh I should donate that but I don't have a designated donation place now I do

and then when the box gets full it goes to my car now granted it will sit in my car for at least

three weeks before I get to goodwill but progress right I was gonna ask I was gonna say my donation

box is my trunk yeah oh yeah no it'll be three weeks minimum and I'll finally get annoyed with

it clanking around from side to side as I drive and then but progress right like it is yep I like

that because there are things that I come across everyone so I was like I don't really have

anything I'll wait until I do a full clean out or you know yeah yeah that's a good idea I might I

might take that one

I'm gonna I'm gonna do that it's awesome yeah it's those sanity saving things right

absolutely you know obviously I'm biased because I'm super big into tech but I wanted to ask too

are there any like new apps or programs you want to try out this year that the hangout spot

how could I forget no but for real I do want to I do want to utilize that with

um some folks I've recently made friends with because I think it would be a great way to just

make sure that we're kind of like keeping in touch and it's like low-key so if I'm going

to go work at a Starbucks one day or something and just throw it out there and they can come

hang out and we don't have to schedule a coffee date and you know yes make it a whole thing

which feels oh I love that yes that was the whole intent um other apps or things I want to try out

I want to try replit some more I've messed around with it a little bit and I mean it's just for those

of you who don't know what it is it's a app that you can use for vibe coding and I would love to

I'd love to utilize that too.

Go and create that habit tracker.

Make your habit app yes yeah but there's a couple other projects that I'd like

I'd like to dig into check out firebase too google firebase okay yes I remember you mentioning that

once it's cool this is me getting out my post-it so I don't forget about that later

I'm not even kidding did it how about you uh I just I just had one and I I literally just forgot

it is there anything to like

is there anything that helps you like declog your brain you know sometimes you're just like

oh there's too much and you have to like my desk will get that way sometimes I'm like I have to

stop everything I'm doing even though I have 10 things to do just so I can clear my desk and feel

like okay now I can like move on but with your brain yeah take a long story short I basically

am creating my own like personal knowledge base I guess for lack of better term I'm just using like

in my personal life on my own

like computer that I have in the closet acting as a server I have a program called next cloud

it's like google drive you can put files and stuff on there and one of the programs that it comes with

is called collectives and it's basically like a digital notebook and you can nest pages unlimited

under each other you can make sections expand contract so it's super nice and then you can

create links between the pages and then it's like a markdown editor so like you don't spend any time

with formatting because tab always indents and then you can add you know a table an image like

you want it's super nice it's kind of like loop actually oh okay um and what I've been doing

lately is especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed or like uh you know at work I use one note because

we pay for Microsoft so I do this in one note sometimes but in my personal life I didn't have

a system so I go there and I I have like a to-do list and I jot down my raw thoughts and then I

once they're written down I know I won't forget and I can come back later so I've been basically

you know I have a like an inbox per se where I put down all of my

raw thoughts and I clean that up later but then I have like an actual system where I'm keeping

track of like I can't forget this but I don't have a great place to keep it so like here I'm

gonna make a folder for that and like put the note in and it's basically just like a glorified

text document with nested pages and stuff but that's one thing I found out it really helped me

like yeah yeah because sometimes I feel like my brain just gets too full and then I don't have

room to process and so if I at least get it out and then I can pick the one I want to with

because I'm so focused on like not forgetting everything else because I'm so

scatterbrained half the time you know what I mean so yeah yep yep I like that that's cool

and then it's accessible on my phone so if I'm gone I don't have to be worried about like oh

that's blocked in my house right I'm on the hunt though like I'm always looking for especially

efficiency hacks so like if you hear of any new apps we're pretty good at that but I hope you

would tell me right away I would for sure hopefully our listeners would tell us too

no kidding

so anyway how about we end with a challenge to our listeners love it I love a challenge

I feel like it should be around the basis of choosing five systems to improve or five like

processes or systems to improve without getting too lofty you know what one can't be all of my

relationships as one like that'd be too big could be pre-scheduled text messages for reminders yes

exactly but you know stop doing and start thinking about

how you could upgrade the system and then that way you don't have to be so stressed out when

you're realizing that that's a hard habit to break yep yep embrace embrace the unhinged it's okay you

don't have to to complete that resolution a yes or a no you just need to make progress and you'll

be happier and have less anxiety about it exactly like the reality is is the yes or no causes stress

yep yep for sure sweet well until next time so until next time stay tight and have a great day

and a little unhinged

look at that on the money 130 I was gonna end with oh I got a hangout push

is it because I said I'm going no I just wanted to say it's like that

oh my gosh that's funny until next time stay unhinged or no stay type a my bad here we go

you