Day 31: Planning for the next 30

Making this month better than the last

Yesterday, I spent some time reflecting on my struggles and accomplishments in the month of June. Today, I want to revise my goals and habits for a more fruitful July. I’ve written about my stance on sharing goals before, so I’m reluctant to share these goals publicly. Instead, I’ll share some broader themes around my goals and some principles I’m using to come up with them.

Thinking long-term

The number one thing I’d like to prioritize is making my future self more appreciative of the decisions I make today. That means thinking about decisions that will serve me over the course of a month, a year, and a lifetime. Major categories of long-term goals are health, career, and social—areas that won’t immediately impact my life but can compound over long periods of neglect.

Attaching to existing habits

I’ve found it easiest to modify or expand on existing habits rather than building new ones from scratch. For example, I’ve started to come up with ways to reduce my phone use by modifying my bedtime routine to replace the time I would have otherwise spent scrolling. It’s a page I took out of Atomic Habits that seems to work well for me.

That being said, I want to leave room for the serendipitous, unplanned moments that may occur this month, so I won’t be planning every minute to the T.