What You Ought to Do in 2024

Try a little harder to be a little better

The magnet on my fridge reads: "Try a little harder to be a little better."

Funny how I only noticed it now—at this time of the year—when many of us are in the mode of setting out resolutions, the stuff-I’ll-stop-and-start-doing.

It’s time to set some goals, and we’re going do all we can to achieve them.

Yet, perhaps, the new-year-new-me chronicle is no more than a fairytale. Calendar dates are merely psychological milestones that make us highly receptive to change, as long as it seems better than the year before.

The reality is, every single day is a new year because one year has passed since that day, one year earlier.

So why the emphasis on the crossover? Why not start living your resolutions any day, any time of the year?

But still, who am I to deny this significant occasion. It’s important to all of us. The Japanese would engage in Hatsumode—the practice of visiting a shrine or temple in the New Year to pray for good fortune for the coming year. It’s customary for the Spanish to eat twelve grapes—one at each stroke of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Health is wealth, one would say, and that’s a good enough reason for anyone to celebrate. To be alive and kicking is the greatest blessing of all!

So let’s use this week to start afresh—to regroup, refill, reorient, and to remind ourselves of the things we should double-down on in 2024.

Here are some ideas and mindsets I want to go hard in the coming year. Take some time to contemplate how they could add value to your journey.

Set a Vision For Yourself By First Saying No

A wise person in the Bible once said, “Without vision, people would perish.” It’s not a physical death they suffer, though, but one that’s exponentially grievous: a mental-spiritual demise that eventually leads to a certain kind of death. They can’t focus. They can’t reach their goals. They can’t follow their dreams, not because they’re incapable, but because there’s nothing to set their aims at, or rather, there are too many things to set their aims at. The word Gladys and I have chosen for ourselves in 2024 is: ACCELERATION. Accelerated learning. Accelerated creating. Accelerated pursuits—claiming what we believe to be our purpose and converging everything we have into making it come alive. And when our resources are finite, there comes a viciousness to say NO to things that may seem important or urgent. Craig Groschel once said, “You have to start saying no to good things so you’ll be able to say yes to the best things.” Only the essential should remain. It must remain. There’s no other way around this.

In what aspects of your life are you going to say hell yes! to with every hell no?

Actor Matthew McConaughey also said it interestingly: “I was making B’s in five things. I want to make A’s in three things.” Those three things: his family, foundation, his acting career. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife, a dad to a growing toddler. Saying yes to another takes away the time I’ve promised to set aside for the two most important people in my life. How much thinner can the slice be?

Your vision is as authentic as the amount of nos you say, which translates into the quality of your yeses, which translates into the fulfilment of your calling. In work, in life, in family. You can’t separate them. They’re all the same.

Re-Read and Redo

I read twenty books this year. I’m contented with this personal record. But there is something else more valuable than reading itself: re-reading. When we return to old material—old books, articles, newsletters—we gain new perspectives. I catch things I’ve missed before. I learn things I couldn’t understand the first time. I re-read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One when I contemplate about the future of Gosh! Kids and how to take it to another level. I re-read verses in the Bible to reconnect with my spirituality, to reaffirm my faith, and when I’m in need of solace. I re-read Viktor Frankl’s Man's Search For Meaning when there’s a desire to rationalise the hardships and doubt around me. This practice isn’t limited to books. Redo stuff. Redo conversations with people. Redo what you can redo with the intentionality of surprising yourself with a new found revelation. The content doesn’t change, but its effect on you does. Re-read and redo.

Accept That We Are Vulnerable in this Complex World

If I asked you how much weight you think your decisions have on your future, what would your answer be?

Lyndon B Johnson found himself in the hospital during the 1948 Texas Senate Race, suffering from excruciating pain caused by a kidney stone. He demanded his assistant announce his withdrawal from the race. But his assistant defied and never made the announcement. Johnson eventually recovered, triumphed in the election, went on to become Vice President under JFK before ascending to the presidency as the 36th President of the United States. And perhaps, Vietnam, a conflict that shaped an entire generation and divided American society, might have been a minor engagement rather than a protracted and deeply contentious war.

Now, imagine the scenario where Johnson’s assistant did exactly what he was instructed.

Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story The Garden of Forking Paths where he compares life to wandering in a garden with ever-changing paths. We can see many possible futures, but with each step, the paths shift, creating new routes and closing off others. From kidney stones, to President of the United States, to a damning conflict that echoes today, everything we have done—today, and down the road—matters more than we think.

And if our fate is dependent on our actions, the flip side of the coin is true too: we have no control over how our lives will turn out.

Slightly more than a year ago on my birthday, a couple of us drove down west to Nagasaki City. The city I’ve only read about or watched on film was, indeed, a real place. I found myself standing on ground zero, the exact point where the last atomic bomb fell on thousands of unexpectant people. I shut my eyes, immersed myself in a vivid imagination where, in a split second, a shockwave of fire would obliterate me, along with my family and friends, to the very core. It’s impossible to put to words this kind of experience. But the southern city of Japan was a last-minute addition to the backup targeting lists because of cloudy weather that obscured Kokura—the intended target—from the pilot’s cockpit. Luck, as much as I hate to admit it, can be your best friend if you choose to see it that way.

But is this luck? Or is this fate?

Never underestimate your actions, and never under how your circumstances and environment plays a pivotal role in to molding your destiny. It shapes you in ways you’d never imagine and presents you opportunities (or disasters) you’d never dream of. The sooner we accept this—that we are vulnerable in this complex world—the sooner we protect the sacred space around us and treat everything we do with intentionality and gratitude. Never take anything, ANYTHING, for granted! Fate is fragile, but you don’t have to be.

Now, I’d ask again—how much weight do your decisions have on your future?

Raise Your Hand, Accept The Task

Going on the radio wasn’t something I had set sights on, so when DJ Joshua Simon suggested Gladys and I bring Gosh! Kids on the primetime evening show, my immediate reaction was uneasiness. Do I have anything interesting to say? Who wants to listen to two thirty-year-olds talk about their vision for the next generation? WHO ARE YOU? The more I spoke about my inadequacies, the what-ifs, the more it morphed into a cycle of self-discouragement. The logical response was to put a stop to it because if I hadn’t—if I had continued to short-change myself with fear and insecurities—it would have snowballed into an insurmountable obstacle that could possibly undermine future endeavors. “If I’d waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started ‘being creative’,” Austin Kloen once wrote, “I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things.” The more you lie to yourself, the more it becomes a reality. Yes, it's overwhelming. Yes, it's nerve-racking. Yes, every new challenge always seem too big for us to handle. A lot of things are. But raise your hand, accept the task anyway, because the fallacy that you should begin only when the conditions are right is, by all accounts, absurd.

“What if I am not ready? What if I’m not smart enough? What if I mess up?” a young Marcus Aurelius once asked his teacher, Rusticus, in the days leading up to his place on the throne. “Just do your best, step by step,” Rusticus replied, “That’s no small thing.” You’re ready. Start making stuff happen.

Keep a Journal

Maria Popova believes that the act of journaling is a “practice that teaches us better than any other the elusive art of solitude—how to be present with our own selves, bear witness to our experience, and fully inhabit our inner lives.” Throughout 2022 and 2023, I’ve kept an open and unfiltered collection of my thoughts and ideas in longhand. Re-reading them invites a chuckle, short of an embarrassment with the way I wrote and thought back then. At the end of every Gosh! Kids session, the kids will spend time journaling on their Creative Process Journals. It reinforces the lesson of the day and helps them rationalise their creativity in the process. There’s a subtle power in penning your thoughts into a string of words and to illustrate your ideas on paper.

But perhaps the greatest ROI of keeping an active journal occurs when the author comes to terms with his or her state of mind—that we are unreliable in foreseeing our future, and we undergo significant, often unrecognizable transformations throughout our life.

We are always changing. Our words are always changing. Our thoughts are always changing. That is, and always has been, the constant.

I always keep a pen and notebook close to me because missing out on the interesting stuff pains me. I’ve gone great lengths to ensure I don’t forget them. There’s this notecard system I use to record all the intriguing things I’ve encountered in books and podcasts and newsletters and songs and films and videos. Once I’m done, I stash them categorically into my two-year old’s Puma shoebox. Artist David Hockney made customised adjustments to his suit jackets by tailoring the inside pockets specifically to fit a sketchbook. The musician Arthur Russell had a penchant for shirts with front pockets, allowing him to fold and insert pieces of score sheets. It’s tedious. But that’s the point. If you've exerted effort to acquire or record something, you’ll treat it as valuable and thus, maximise its benefits for your intentions.

Sometimes, it may not be of immediate use, and it may only return to us in the future. Newspaper reporters call this “morgue files”. You preserve lifeless elements that you will revive later in your creative endeavors.

Whichever style you choose—Moleskine journals, Apple notes or traditional notecards—it builds a bridge between our present selves and our future selves, as Popova wrote, granting us unfiltered access to the rough gems of our own minds.

We are as fluid as water, as soft as snow. Words do that to us. And we ought to be as such. That’s how we come to terms with our emotions and experiences, good or bad. That’s how we upgrade.

Always Create to Maintain Creativity

The tagline for Gosh! Kids reads: “Transform your child from a passive consumer into an active creator.” We’ve spend a lot of time drilling in kids (and parents) the criticalness of producing. Produce, produce, produce. Keep that creative faucet open. Let the ideas flow freely.

“The arts aren't just important because they improve math scores,” Sir Ken Robinson once said, “They're important because they speak to parts of children's being which are otherwise untouched.” We’d always tell the kids to hold on tightly to their imagination, their creativity, and to guard it against the mundaneness of the world. They gladly nod their heads in agreement, but the sad part is having to witness the grown-ups do the exact opposite. They let society dictate what’s right and what’s beautiful and what they should do. A famous longitudinal test of creative potential by NASA revealed that you’re 96 percent less creative than you were as a child. Sure, we can’t become kids again, but can we still think like one? Is our education system stifling originality and innovation? What has society groomed us to be? And this isn’t reserved for the artists or the musicians or the writers. It’s for everyone, you, I. Embodying the identity of an active creator is to acknowledge that we are all creative in our ways—regardless of the environment or industry—and the innate ability to produce something is part and parcel of what makes us human.

Your creativity is your sacred space, and the older you get, the more tightly intertwined it becomes. Especially so in this time where we are offloading the brain to computers (I wrote about this). Reconnect your mind with the deepest parts of your soul by using your hands to make stuff.

Always produce, always create. That’s how we maintain our sanity.

Go Straight to the Seat of Intelligence

In the past twelve months, I have had the privilege of being among the coolest and smartest and the most influential people in the creative, spiritual, and education arenas. I loved it. I loved being in the midst of “go-big-or-go-home” people. It intimidates me, but not in a menacing sense—I’d always come out feeling inspired when I listened to their stories of how they’re going to shake the world. Marcus Aurelius said, “go straight to the seat of intelligence” because being the least knowledgeable person in the room will compel you to absorb (if you allow yourself to) as much from those ahead of you.

When their close friend Charles Williams unexpectedly died, C.S Lewis noticed J.R.R Tolkien stopped laughing specifically at a specific Williams joke. He realised later on that, “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity. I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.” A way to conceptualise how others impact us also comes from Epictetus: “Place an extinguished piece of coal next to a live one, and either it will cause the other one to die out, or the live one will make the other reignite.”

Who are the people that can make you laugh in a specific way? Who are the people that can bring out that best in you? Who are the people that can reignite the flame in you? Fellowship with them. Submerge your heads with them. See what they see and listen to what they listen.

I find this contagious and irrationally seductive, yet this is not to say you should imitate everyone you admire.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon became one of the greatest songwriting teams in history by starting off as a cover band. “I emulated Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis,” McCartney said, “We all did.” Someone a few steps ahead can inspire you to change your game plan which ultimately leads to your own success. Imitate and emulate, that’s the name of the game.

Legendary music producer Rick Rubin said, “The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness, so we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.” Don’t just learn the style; Learn the thinking behind the style. Get a glimpse into their minds—that’s what you really want—to internalise their way of looking at the world. But first things first, find your influence, and do all you can to soak in their presence.

Stop Seeking Everyone’s Advise

Gosh! Kids has taught me that I can’t give a one-size-fits-all answer to every child.

Each one is different. How they express themselves, creatively or physically, is largely a mash up of what they’ve learned in school, their upbringing at home, the friends they hang out with, the culture they’re immersed in, the cartoon shows they watch or the books they read. Each child’s world is a variation of another child’s, who’s world is a variation of another. Two children the same age from the same family may come to totally different conclusions about what’s considered beautiful. The night before Martin Luther King’s famous speech, he asked his aides for advise on how he should go about doing it. “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream’,” his adviser Wyatt Walker told him, “It’s trite, it’s cliche. You’ve used it too many times already.” There is no “best” approach when it comes to making decisions, amongst many things, about education, finances, career, who you choose to marry, or which house to live in. Others may have your best interest at heart, but it stems from what they’ve experienced and what they feel is right. For themselves. Not for you. Go for the one that gives you the greatest peace of mind. Manoeuvre by whatever works best for you.

On my son’s second birthday, Gladys and I wrote him a letter that outlined ten things we hope he would carry through his life. One of it was:

Detach yourself from everyone else’s definition of success. Whatever is important to you may not be important to others. Whatever is important to others may not be important to you. We’re all playing different games, with different rules, different systems and different end goals. Using another person’s yardstick to measure your progress will mean that you’ll forever be two steps behind. It’s a game that you cannot win. Instead, focus on competing with only one person — yourself. Identify what makes you happy, what you consider fulfilling and do everything you can to reach that point.

Who are you doing these resolutions for?

When you mess up and feel like you need to get another go at it, fall back onto the fundamentals. Fall on back the why. Come back to the ideas in this post. Don’t quit because it’s the next best option. Don’t quit because reality did not level with your expectations.

I read somewhere that people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can in ten. True transformation, then, happens somewhere in between. So what are you going to do in the next three-six-five days?

I’ll leave you with this: one day you’ll stand face to face with yourself—an imperfect body that has, in the past years, broke resolutions, spent more time doom-scrolling than reading, lied to himself or herself, lived on the premise of someone else’s perception of the world. Despite all that, though, the most beautiful thing about life is that, even when we've fallen short, it deals you second chances—sometimes three, sometimes four—to do it all over again.

You’ll stumble. You’ll mess up for sure. You’ll break those resolutions. That’s because you’re not done yet.

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert says:

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.

We all want to do something great, something new. Yet we’re afraid of screwing up. It’s a common misconception to interpret failure as a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence, as Ed Catmull writes, of doing something new, and, as such, should be seen as valuable. Without them, we’d have no originality, and we die an inside-death.

I’ve read that fear is also known as “excitement-in-disguise”. One of my favourite quotes come from Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” And never allow it to live in your head rent-free, because all of us recognise that one thing in us that’s more powerful than fear. For me, it’s regret. Doing what I was made to do, what I love to do, excites me. What’s your version? It’s your life mission to search for that one thing.

In the end, I’d fall back onto what my favourite children’s author, Dr Seuss, said in his perennial favourite: “Life’s a Great Balancing Act.”

Life is all about trade-offs. It’s about doing as much as the not-doing.

Try a little harder to be a little better.