🚀The Myth of New Year's Resolutions

You are 87% more likely to achieve your goals if...

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🎞 New Mini Documentary: New Year's Resolutions
⏰ Time to write: 8 hours 28 minutes

The saying "New Year, New Me" is totally trite.

No one believes in New Year's resolutions anymore. 😔

It's like it's all a joke anymore.

If you look at how many people fail to keep their resolutions, you could legitimately say we do too, but what if...

The new year really does offer us a new opportunity, just not quite in the way we think? 🤔

What if we really can change our lives at this time of year? 🧐

Over the past year I've been experimenting non-stop to find the answers to these questions. And the result of a long search:

• ⚠️ 6 clear reasons why people fail at New Year's resolutions

• ✅ 1 system that increased my productivity by 87% last year.

But before we dive headlong into this topical subject. 🏊🏼‍♂️

Let's see...

🚀 How's the challenge?

🆕 The new App is out!

After an agonizing wait, the new App is out on Appstore and Play store! The guys have brutally pushed the end of the year and the result is tangible. 🙏🏻

Miles better than the last one!

We took Hormozi's advice and put 10x more work into it just to be a little better than the foreign market leaders. The speed is already showing (except for the very first load, we're still working on that, but from then on, its hyper speed) ⚡️

🛠️ What we're developing in January

We are now testing a new workload. 🧪

Because last year we made the mistake of constantly releasing new features, not to mention bugs. 🪲

Not a sustainable model, to be honest.

But it was good for 1 thing: we did a lot of testing. 👨🏼‍🔬

Now we know which features were good and which ones we can temporarily drop.

So, the new development plan is split in two 50% improving what we already have and 50% developing new features for you.

📝 This is the plan for January:

• 🚨 Improve the wording of notifications to make them more inviting

• 📩 To make the wording of Streak and Weekly Report emails more appealing

• 📲 If you were to prepay on the web, it would then drop you straight into the App

• ⏩️ "Pick up where you left off" feature

• 📗 Bookmark

• 🔍 Book suggestion, if you can't find the book you want when searching, you can suggest it

I think it will add a lot to the experience when these are done!

But you know, if you have any comments, there's a "Feedback" button in the App, top right in "Settings" and it comes directly to me. ✏️

Now let's get started... 🪓

💭 Why aren't New Year's resolutions working?

It all starts with our brain giving us a distorted picture. Because it thinks that if the year starts afresh, it will get a completely clean slate. 🧠

Which is half-true, but far from the truth.

I'll explain...

If you look a little closer, you'll see that just because the date on your phone screen has changed, everything else in your life has stayed the same. 😕

You have the same habits

You hang out with the same people

Even your view of the world hasn't changed

Pretty much nothing has changed, except the date. ❌

And you're wrong to think that everything will be different this year!

"Now I'll show them", you might think.

Unfortunately, in most cases, this initial motivation quickly dries up. According to Forbes, only 8% of people are able to stick to their New Year's resolution for a month. 😲

That's not a lot, but let's be honest, looking back in the past, we may not have managed to stick to it for more than 1 month. 🫤

I'll give you a personal example of this:

Around New Year's Eve 2016, I decided to start reading every day.

10 pages a day, that was the goal. 📖

I did it for 10 days, then I gave up. The excuses came, school, training, etc.

And I quit. 👣

Then 2-3 years later, I started to read properly and I've kept this good habit ever since. I even upped it this year: 1 hour a day is the new goal. 🌞

💡Side note: I dare not think where I would be if I had stuck to reading back then. But that will be part of another story.

As much as I painted a negative picture of New Year's resolutions, I'm about to surprise you. 😉

Because New Year's Resolutions are NOT stupid, they're just done wrong by almost everyone. ❌

Let's see...

🧐 How to do it right?

The feeling of a new year really gives us a boost and if we are clever, we can keep it up. 🔥

However, to do that we need to know the biggest pitfalls so we can prepare for them.

Let's look at the 6 obstacles that everyone faces when making New Year's resolutions.

1. Not having a specific goal 🎯

This is probably the mistake most people make. They are full of dreams, but they don't set goals for any of them, so the dreams remain forever just that... Dreams. 😔

I will show you the process that had the biggest impact on me during my university years.

"If you put a deadline on a dream, it becomes a goal.
If you break a goal down into steps, it becomes a plan.
If you follow a plan and stick to it, over time it becomes a reality."

So, the first step is to make your dream as concrete as possible and put a deadline on when exactly you want to achieve it. 📆

That way, you'll have a goal! 🎯

Just be careful not to make the second mistake...

2. You have too big goals 😵‍💫

I've never talked anyone down from their goals because I believe you grow as big as you can dream. Walt Disney probably said the same thing.

However, you don't have to change the world in 1 year, you have to change it gradually! 💪🏼

"People tend to overestimate what they can achieve in 1 year, but underestimate what they could achieve in 10 years."

You might as well put this sentence on your wall. 😉

Think about the fact that OM is only 5 years old now.

Here's the next one...

3. You don't have a concrete plan 📝

If you're at this level, you're already ahead of the average, because you have a realistic goal in front of you that you can achieve if you work for it.

You just need to know exactly how to get started. 🤔

That's where the Plan comes in.

A Plan means breaking down your goal into concrete steps.

You need to break it down into steps that, if you follow through, you will definitely reach your goal.

Let me give you an example:

"I want to lose 10 kilos:

1. I go to the gym regularly

   1. I need a gym nearby.

   2. I need to buy a season pass

   3. I need a gym suit + towel

2. I can't eat sweets and junk food

   1. I need a diet that I can follow

   2. I need a shopping list

   3. I need a system for when I go shopping and how much I buy

   4. I need to learn how to cook"

That was a pretty simple plan, but you get the idea. The more detailed you can break it down, the better your plan will be! 🔥

📕 Book Recommendation: listen to Brian Tracy's summary of "The Flight Plan" and you'll see clearly what goals to set and what plans to make to achieve them. Find it in BookBase! 🎧

Once you have that, we'll scoot on to the next one...

4. You have no supportive habits

Pay attention now, because this could be the difference between success and failure!

A supporting habit is what is the activity that, if you keep doing it, will move you forward towards your goal.

📕 Book recommendation. Probably the best book on habit formation. You can find it at BookBase. 🎧

I'll show you through the previous example:

"I thought our goal was to lose 10 pounds.

And so, we can develop habits that support it:

• Go to the gym regularly → Exercise 4 times a week

• Eating unhealthy food → Eating healthy food 4x a day."

It's called a supportive habit because, if you keep doing it, it will support you in completing your plan and thus getting you closer to your goal. 🙏🏻

Since I know this is the most complicated part, I'll give you a few more examples to make sure you understand:

• 10.000 BookBase members → 4 hours of focused work per day

• Read 50 books → 1 hour of reading per day

• Gain 5kg → Eat 2,800 calories a day

• Be more relaxed and mindful → 15 minutes of meditation daily

• Earn 1,000,000 HUF → 4 hours of focused work a day (again)

• Squat with 100 kg → 2 leg exercises a week

• Run a marathon → 4 runs a week

• Get 10,000 TikTok followers → 30 minutes of content production per day

I read this back in the book Atomic Habits and it stuck:

"You don't rise to the greatness of your goals; you fall back to the level of your habits." ~ James Clear

You can have huge goals, but, if you don't have these supporting habits, you won't be able to achieve them.

Okay, with that out of the way, there are only 2 things left to do...

5. Failure demotivates you immediately 😪

I'm sure you've been there, had a big Streaked on Duolingo, Snapchat or even BookBase and lost. 🔥

How did you feel afterwards?

Bad! And it immediately demotivated you... 🫤

So, it's the same with habits, many people fall in the first month because they slip in a day or two when they can't stick to their plan and it immediately takes away their motivation.

That's where I bled to death reading back in the day. 😔

There was 1 day when I didn't make it and from then on, I let it go. ❌

Just think about how silly it was. I failed to read 10 pages and so I gave up on the whole 3,500 pages a year. How small is 10 pages compared to 3,500.

So, the next year I was smarter! 🧠

Which means that it's okay to miss 1x, but make sure you don't miss 2x in a row.

The point is that you have habits everywhere in your life. Where you don't have good habits, you have bad habits.

Not eating healthy is a habit. A bad habit. ❌

That's why I show you what happens when you don't have supportive habits:

Let's say you miss 1x, no problem, maybe something just came up. However, if you miss 2x, a new habit starts to form instead.😱

"You didn't go to the gym 2x and Netflixed instead, "no problem", from then on it's not your workout habit that develops, it's Netflixing."

Get it?

This is why it's important not to miss 2x anything in a row. ❌

If you do miss out multiple times in a row, it's a warning sign that what you've set a goal for yourself is too big and doesn't fit into your current life.

You don't have to be totally discouraged, you just have to take it back and try again. 🔄

I promise you, if you understand this, you will have no problem with perseverance.

📕 Book recommendations: David Goggins' book "You Can't Hurt Me" fits best here. It gives you exactly this insight! It's summarized above in the App. 🎧

And finally, the last one...

⚠️ 6. You don't see change fast enough and it disappoints you⚠️

I would add that this is perfectly valid. I was the same for a long time, I couldn't see the point of what I was doing.

Sure, I set the goals, the plan, the habits, but I didn't always see the results. 😕

And that made me discouraged. 😔

Because of this, I've spent the last 1 year creating the perfect partner to help me achieve my goals. A system I could rely on. 🙏🏻

I've done it all in a Google Sheets (kind of like an online excel) so I can access it online at any time, even from my phone.

The idea is that you can write down your yearly goals and supporting habits, then tick them off day by day so you can see a streak fill up. 🎯

And once it's filled, it's time to reward yourself for sticking it out until then. This way it's not only a good experience, but also positive feedback to your brain:

"Hmm, I'm getting rewarded for what I'm doing, then I need to do more of it."

It's an easy way to get your brain on your side. 🧠

The system is perfectly structured to reward you just when you're about to lose motivation, so it simply puts you back on track. 🎁

But, to quantify my results, I was able to tick 87% more daily habits in 2023 than in 2022. So, this one little system nearly doubled my persistence. ✅

And it all takes about 20 seconds a day.

I usually check them before bedtime, so I never forget.

I want as many of you as possible to achieve your goals in 2024, but I also want you to commit to them. 🔥

That's why I've decided to make it payable for a minimal fee!

It costs 2.000 HUF, but this way I know that only those who are really serious will start! 💪🏼

You can find it here: I am serious!

🔒 Before I forget: I am so sure that this system will work for you that I am offering a lifetime guarantee! If you diligently tick off your habits and at the end of the year you say it hasn't made a difference (which I'd be genuinely surprised if it has), I'll refund your money without a word!

Finally, the usual closing...

✅ What exactly do you do?

[ ] First step, have 2-3 specific goals based on this:

[ ] Step two, make a plan for your goals that answers HOW you can achieve them. 📝

[ ] Step three, look at what habits you need to incorporate to achieve your goals. 🤔

[ ] Step four, from here on, focus on sticking to your habits and not your goal. After all, if you stick to your habits, sooner or later you will reach your goal. 🙏🏻

[ ] Step five, track your habits so that in a short time, you will see a change. 🔥

[ ] Step six, remember the 2x rule, it's okay to make a mistake sometimes. ❌

[ ] Step seven, do it long enough to get the result you want: your goal! 💪🏼

These 7 steps will get you closer to your goals than anything has ever done before.

I'm not saying it will be easy, because I don't want to lie.

But one thing's for sure, at the end of the year you'll look back on 2024 with pride and you'll finally be able to say:

"This was the year when everything changed."

🔥 Biggest obstacle

Making the App more stable. And the way we can do that is by making it:

• An App Documentation,

• A Design System

• And Tests for the code

The Documentation will help us expand this year so that we can more easily hire new staff. 📝

The Design System, will speed up Kokesz’s work. 🎨

And Tests means we'll write rules for the code we write, which will check that it's working properly before every update. They suck to write, but they can filter out most of the bugs. 📟

👷🏼‍♂️ Fix It Friday

We're already in beta with our new bug reporting system, which is almost identical to Instagram. 🪲

You just shake your phone and you can report bugs or even make suggestions on what to change. 😲

But I'll go further:

• 📲 Instantly attach a screenshot you can draw on

• 🔴 If you want to screen record, you can

• 📨 And you can send it to us at the touch of 1 button

And Edu has the notification flashing! 🚨

This is what it will look like:

If there are no problems in the Beta, you should see it in the App in a week or two. 😉

📖 What am I reading now?

I have 3 books written down for myself this year that I will definitely read:

• Reality Transurfing

• Positive mental attitude

• 10X

All of them are geared towards making it easier to think big, not limit myself and harness the true power of my mind. 🧠

1. Reality Transurfing - by Vadim Zeland. This is the book I've been wanting to read for the 3rd year and I'm writing it down as one of my goals. But until now I could never bring myself to read it, as it is over 700 pages long. 😮‍💨

   1. It is all about explaining spirituality with quantum physics. Yes, I know, it's a geeky subject, but I swear it sucked me in. I might add, I've never read about quantum physics, let alone in English, so I'm going pretty slow.

   2. It clearly explains the law of attraction, vibrations and why some people will be successful while others will not. At first, I thought it was pretty woo-woo, but I was positively disappointed.

🎧 What have I been listening to now?

• I listened to 2 interviews with Brian Tracy, one of which was about how he sets goals and the basis for making money.

• In the other he explained how to make more of the money you already have.

  • It is amazing how much knowledge this man has.

💡 Side note: Today (January 5th) is his 80th birthday. So, I wish him a happy birthday from here!

✍🏼 Top quote

"You can achieve practically any goal you set yourself, if the goal is clear and you stick to it long enough." ~ Brian Tracy

🧪 Question of the week