4 Small Habit Shifts in 2024 For Me

Small shifts, big benefits

My approach to 2024 is simple: spend more time adjusting the balance.

You see, most of my life I have subscribed to the status quo. Everything from my career to college to how I structured my days I looked left and right and took notes.

In 2023, I started untangling and unsubscribing from the norm. I bought a house that was technically a step back, I went part-time at work, I actively avoided promotions, I stopped doing what everyone else was doing and started listening to myself.

And it was the most successful year of my life. Both financially and mentally. I have more mental clarity today on what I want my life to look like than ever before.

And it’s helped me start to think of 2024. And these are the contrary habits I’m building in 2024.

1. Idle time

For the longest time, I’ve indulged in the notion of being action-led. To not waste time thinking about a thing. To just do the thing. I’ve always thought that people waste far too much time thinking.

Thomas Jefferson once said: “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”

And that neatly described my thesis on productivity. Until I took time off this December. I was at breaking point, it’s been a long year of renovations, juggling jobs and priorities. I was exhausted. So exhausted I nearly angry-cried. I didn’t.

I took the holidays off. I was ‘loosely working’. Before the break, I’d written down all the things I was struggling with and my focus for 2024. One day last week I opened my notepad and looked at that list.

I had nothing to do that day, so I just started thinking. The problem: How to increase the number of newsletter subscribers.

Since writing that problem down, it’d been lurking in the back of my mind for days. I wasn’t actively thinking about it but passively, everything I read or listened to something that mentioned increasing subscribers, my ears pricked up.

Last week, I sat for an hour and brainstormed how to increase my subscriber count. It took me 20 minutes and then I spent the 40 minutes left actioning those thoughts.

Two actions have led to a 50% increase in daily subscribers.

For 2024, I’m taking a new approach — more thinking time. Less writing out to-do lists as long as my arm and more thinking, reading and pondering time.

2. Aiming for 5%

I sat down to write my 2024 revenue goal and I was pretty stumped. You see, last year I aimed to make $100,000 on the internet (and I was making $10,000 at the time).

So I felt the pressure to increase x10 again. $1 million. Surely not? No. That’s too much. Okay, something more manageable, a doubling? $200,000?

Something felt wrong. I picked $100,000 and didn’t really think about it but it proved a worthy target for the last 12 months, but these next 12 months weren’t necessarily about more — were they?

The truth is, I want to write on the internet for as long as I live. Even doubling over the next 50 years is a number incomprehensible and it’s something that may well set me up for failure. All of a sudden I might find my measure of success is x10 or nothing. Wildly unrealistic.

I don’t want my yardstick to be x10, I want it to be something I can strive towards and feel good about hitting. I want to find joy in the pursuit. I want to get there by having fun. So I’m aiming for 5% increases over the next 50 years.

5% this year will do just fine.

3. Better Procrastination

I know procrastination is an emotional problem. I know I procrastinate more when I don’t know how to do something vs. the bliss I feel when I do. Knowing that has helped me procrastinate 70% less.

But I’m still that 30% gets me.

I feel the dull ache of not knowing what to do, sit staring at the screen for 60 seconds and decide I need a break and browse on Twitter or Facebook. Whilst I’ve perhaps done the best I can to account for the fact that procrastination happens, I haven’t done much in the way of assessing how I procrastinate.

I deleted Instagram back in 2018 and it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made. But alas, as things improve we forget what changes led to that improvement and fall back into our old ways. That’s happened to me with Twitter.

For a little while now I’ve been scrolling too much on Twitter. It happens like clockwork, I’m meant to be writing, I get stuck and I open Twitter. So over the holidays, I scheduled a bunch of Twitter posts. The point is to spend much less time there.

Instead, when I need to procrastinate, I’ll pick up a book. So far it’s been immense.

4. Sticking by myself

I turn 30 this year. There comes a time when you have to choose to back yourself. I’ve historically been very bad at this. Forever second-guessing that what I’ve concluded is right and that maybe I got my wires twisted along the way.

It means, usually, I don’t rock the boat. I fold. I just go with the flow. And that’s always served me well (my life is very low drama) but it’s a balancing act. I’m not saying I’ll speak my mind, put my foot down at every opportunity or pull someone up every time I think they’ve got it wrong — far from it.

But I’ll lean more into a confrontation when I feel strongly about my position. Forcing myself to have hard conversations makes me realize one thing — they’re nowhere near as bad as I think. And there is a wonderful upside — the feeling that comes after when you back yourself instead of backing down.

More standing strong when I feel weak.

That’s all. What are the habits you’re taking into 2024?

Looking to level up in the new year? If you want more content like this, join well over 17,000+ on my free newsletter — The Part-Time Creator Club.