2026 January 6 Plan a low stress week

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about starting your year off well. So let's get started. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message.

This week we're going to talk about some ways to make a conscious start to the new year, and I'm specifically not talking about trying to turn your life around by the end of January or losing a hundred pounds over the end of the week, or any of those sorts of silly resolutions. Instead, we're talking about taking a deliberate path. Consciously deciding what's most important to us now and in the foreseeable future, which sounds like it's both more fun and far more attainable. And if you already made some New Year's resolutions, well that's fine. We'll talk about those a bit as well.

Although related to New Year's resolutions, this year, Quitter's Day, as it's called, is Friday, January 9th, this coming Friday. That's today. Some large percentage, it's like 50 to 80% depending upon who you ask, of people have already given up one or more of their New Year's resolutions. So we all know how that happens. You're at a party or at an office meeting and everyone's talking about some new diet or gym workout, and they're all excited. So of course we say, sure, count me in. Ten days later, you realize it wasn't at all aligned with your priorities, your goals, and it was just the group's enthusiasm.

Well, success leaves clues and failure leaves clues as well. And in this case, it's the same clue. People are far more likely to be successful when they're in a group who supports them. So no matter what your goals might be, the first big hint is to try and find some people who are working towards the same goal as you.

But maybe much like me, New Year's Day isn't all that enthralling to you as a milestone in your life. That's even better. Because first off, that means every day is a great day to make some desired changes. Secondly, you'll be less likely to be affected by all those other people who made oftentimes arbitrary or unattainable goals and had to give up. So now we're starting from a much better place, both in time and in attitude, because we get to pick one or a couple goals to focus on and we now know enough to try and find some supportive people to help us along. And in a moment we're gonna cover a big trick to help us make these goals part of our daily routine.

Now, a lot of my followers are either retired or in a later phase of their life where they might have fewer fixed time demands throughout their days. And that's both a blessing and a curse because while you can get up and have a leisurely breakfast and start the day relaxed, there's also a tendency to never really start the day at all. Now, you may know these days. You're somewhat busy doing a variety of little tasks the whole day through, and the next thing you know, it's 4:30 in the afternoon. You can't call the bank or the doctor's office. You forgot to return a call to someone else. You didn't get some chores done. How does the day sneak by like that?

The good news is that because you have a lot of interests, you spent the day doing things that you found interesting or pleasurable. Congratulations on that. The bad news is that although you may not have many specific time requirements, you still have some of them, and so you have to remember to look after those as well.

So the next big trick is to schedule the activities related to your goals. And that doesn't mean that you have to schedule out every minute of your day, but you try and get in the habit of at least making a few general time blocks throughout the week to address needed tasks. For example, say maybe from 10:00 AM to noon time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you make calls or something like that. And if you don't have any business calls to make, you can call your friends. That has multiple benefits because now not only are you being mentally active, very important, but you're also being social. And being social is one of the very best longevity tricks.

Another huge boost for longevity is being physically active. So maybe make another general time throughout the week when you're purposely active. You get up, maybe take a walk or go down to the lobby of your apartment building if that's the situation you're in, and walk around and talk to some people. Whatever feels appropriate and medically possible for you.

And since you have two general sets of time blocks laid out, why not add a third one? And how about working on your goals. Thought we forgot about them, didn't you? Nope. But laying it out in this way wasn't an afterthought. It was part of a system whereby your routine, while still allowing a lot of flexibility, does have at least a little bit of structure. So your brain is expecting to be doing something a few times each week and developing that regular pattern into a habit is what helps, almost guarantees that you'll stick with the resolutions and the goals that you made.

Because instead of thinking I have to do my taxes, for example, you remember that Tuesday afternoon is one hour of finances, so all you have to do is come up with one or a couple tasks related to your finances and your taxes. What you've done is eliminate the biggest blockade to actually getting started, which is actually starting. To make it even easier, when you finish your hour, write down a quick note of what you need to start with next time you work on it. That removes a bit more of the decision fatigue, which often prevents us from starting things. Should I work on this or should I work on that? If it's already written down as a natural follow on to what you were working on the last time, it makes starting so much easier.

Okay, so at this point we have a flexible, but still present layout to our week. Plus, we found some things to do in each of these time blocks, but what about days when we just don't feel like doing the next thing we're planning on doing? For me, it took me so many years to realize this. I finally figured out that if I truly, totally don't feel like doing something, the first thing I try and do is remember if it felt like I was getting sick. It's amazing how a pending illness can totally disrupt our rhythm. For me, I'm usually full of energy right before I crash. So I think, I was usually active yesterday. And if the answer is yes, then I'm probably getting sick and rest may be the best option.

But what if there doesn't seem to be any particular reason? Remember how we were developing our social network with calls? Well call one of your good friends and ask them to talk to you a few minutes, and then to tell you that you have things to do. Yes. Our brain responds very differently when someone else tells us what we've been ignoring when we tell ourselves. Plus, now we feel a responsibility to do what we said we were gonna do because our friend is expecting us to.

If you don't have anyone available to call, you can write a note to yourself that describes what you don't want to do, followed by two things. How much better you'll feel when it's done and how annoying it'll be to have to face the same thing another day because you didn't get to it today. What you're really doing is helping to guide your brain to make an actual or realistic choice and not a deceptive one. The task has to be done, but your brain wants to keep you happy. So the decision it presents is do it and be sad or don't do it and be happy, but that isn't the real decision. The real choice is do it and be sad, followed by being really happy because it's done or don't do it and know it's hanging over you and will make you even sadder another day. Once you see the real alternatives, then just doing what you wanted to becomes a path to a bigger happiness.

And some days you may just end up skipping what you need to do. Have grace towards yourself. Sometimes things just seem overwhelming, but every challenge is an opportunity to learn. So do try to think about why it seems so insurmountable, and then try and change the circumstances. Perhaps yesterday was a very active day and you were just tired. Perhaps it was a mentally taxing day and you just couldn't focus. Just note what happened. Write it down in your journal or somewhere, and then you'll know a little better the next time how to keep your momentum going.

But think for a moment of what we just created here. It's a very simple, very flexible method to still allow you to do pretty much everything you wanna do when you wanna do it with just a little bit of structure. But that flexibility takes off any pressure so you can address the things you need to do and even better, be motivated to work on the goals you set for the year.

Could we have just used this same structure to just address your New Year's goals or the goals you wanna do? Yes, but when you do that in isolation, then your brain looks at them differently. Because when those goals are just another normal part of your daily or weekly routine, they're not something different, but they're just really there, and it's just something you normally do. And when you set them aside, then they do look different and they're not essential to your brain and easier to skip. By weaving them in with all the other little things that you should take care of, they all work together to help you remove stress from your life and feel better about things. And remember, your brain is all about keeping you safe and happy. So if by spending a few hours each week on recurring chores helps remove stress, then adding a little bit more to the routine is just perceived as another activity to make you happy.

So to recap. Schedule a few general times throughout the week to attend to certain types of tasks. Maybe it's to make calls, do paperwork, whatever it is. They have a place in your weekly schedule, and now that place is flexible. It comes around the block on a regular basis. Try to maintain a social community. It really helps with achieving things that matter to you, has a huge longevity benefit, and it can help you with setting your goals as well.

And since you're blocking out a little time for tasks, then add in a little more time for purposely being physically active. It doesn't have to be huge, but it should be regular because doing a little bit of something many times a week is a lot better for you than trying to do a lot of it just occasionally.

And since we're scheduling some flexible time blocks, also allow some time to work on your goals. By this point, your brain will be expecting a weekly routine, so it'll see working on your goals as just something that's gonna make you happy and it's not a chore.

And again, but what about those times when you just don't feel like doing something? Try calling a friend for motivation. Writing down the reasons that doing it will make you feel better. And if you just can't find motivation, then see if you can find a reason why. Maybe you're getting sick, maybe you're tired, but try and learn something from it.

So that's it for the evening. Your homework is to think about one or two things that you wanna accomplish or change, and how much time they require during the week. Then sketch out a really simple weekly schedule, say like one hour each day in the late morning or something like that, during which you work on your chores, along with your goals. Extra points if you write down every time you do what you planned and exactly what you got done, because after a few weeks, you might find that it really doesn't take that long to do everything that you thought, because once you started making it a habit, then it just becomes easy to work through them. Your brain will help you along that path.

So that's it for the evening. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. Check out UKR7.com. Those are links to help the people in Ukraine, WCK.org, World Central Kitchen. Those are both international sites, but local charities and even just a simple smile can change someone else's day for the better in ways you can’t imagine. So lots of ways to help people around you. Lots of ways to look outside yourself. Get a different view on the world.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit that like button, and if not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.