8 Easy Rules to Change Your Life in 2023

Forget fad diets, workout regimes, and coding classes. These softer, subtle shifts will help you unlock your favorite self.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

We’re in the Calendarregnum — that haze between Christmas and New Year’s that acts as an annual year-bridging fermata. Every day is Blursday; you might be day-drunk, and there’s no better week to do mushrooms.

I’ll be the first to tell you that calendar flips are pretty arbitrary excuses to make wholesale changes to your life. There are many, many more meaningful reasons to do so, and data bears out time after time that without a compelling reason, we will continue being exactly who we are.

Data also suggest most of you are shit at keeping your so-called resolutions, and the percentage of you who will up and decide to change and then actually do it is infinitesimal.

Of course, that sure won’t stop you from trying.

If I may, I’d like to suggest that instead of turning over a new leaf, you temper your ambitions and consider making minor tweaks — either one-off pass-fail goals (e.g. “get a new job you don’t hate”, “paint the kid’s bedroom”) or subtle shifts in how you approach life (e.g. “send a handwritten thank-you note to someone who meant a lot to you once a month”…