writing – THE HETA BLOG

Happy New Year Readers!
This is the beginning of the year 2026. A year that I am sure will bring many challenges to all of us.

Now, tell me: What is a common activity that a lot of people (including me) do on New Year’s Eve?
Yes, you got it!

A NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS LIST

This is the time that we take to embrace a dozen of new habits that at the end will help us to become better human beings. How nice. <insert sarcasm emoji here>

I don’t know about you people, but I usually get a very low score, at the end after checking all the things that I was supposed to do during the year. Let’s face it, you don’t put simple things in you NYR List, you might probably end like me at the end of the year.

Simple? No, no, no, a Resolution is more than a list of simple tasks. In fact, is very common to include things as hard as “Quit Smoking”, “Quit alcohol” or any other bad habit with decades of reinforcement.

This year I am going to try something different. I am going to aim to only ONE THING and one thing only. I am not saying that I won’t try to do other things, but this ONE THING is my whole list for the year. If I accomplish something it will be this. So, my mental focus will be mostly on this one task.

Ok, now what is this such important one liner? IMPROVE MY HEALTH

Now what does this really means? It means that I will be a great part of the day making choices that will make an impact on my health. And as you well know, there is a lot of room for improvement.

If you are thinking that the goal is too generic, I would have to agree. However everyday you are facing things that affect your health. So, the goal is to think and decide what is my trade for the things that don’t get me closer to my goal. Amazingly enough, when you have something that is can be reduced to binary (yes or no), deciding is not that hard. Thinking about the main goal all the time is very powerful. It will keep you in the right track and avoid errors either by commitment or by guilt, it doesn’t matter which, the important thing is that at the end, you win.

Today is January 1 of 2026.
A good day for starting something.

time-rivers

If your knowledge of music from the 80’s is low, it should be hard for you to know what follows the title. So for the sake of our post, let’s imagine that you know the song “TIME” from the group “Alan Parsons Project”. Meaning that you know that the words “To The Sea” is at the end of our sentence.

Time, keeps flowing like a river… To the sea. Nothing too mysterious or philosophical about this. Time, ever moving (like the water of a river) have a final destination (the sea) that means the end of its cycle. At this point the water from the river just like time is lost into something bigger. Yes, time won’t stop to wait for us and if you want to use (drink) some of the water, you better do it while you can. Because by the time (no pun intended) it gets to the sea, you won’t be able to drink it as it will be salty water.

Half of this post is done and you just got a longer version of “Time, you use it or you lose it”. But don’t consider this as a lost of your “Time”, just a reminder that even a beautiful songs from Alan Parsons Project will tell you about this valuable resource and that is such a waste not to put it to good use. Now for that purpose, let me show you a technique that I am using.

There are some things that I am struggling to give them time. I was seeing weeks go by and by the end of each week, the amount of time used in each “Topic” was less. So I got this idea of thinking of these things that I want to do as “Subjects” from a college class, where each subject have a number of credits (hours per week). The more the credits, the more important was time for the subject.

Going on with our example: You want to follow up on your Language learning (Italian), you want to work on the good habit of reading, you want to go to the Gym and finally, you want to do some Meditation. So based of the importance that you assign to your subjects, you end with: Italian (2), Gym (4), Meditation (2), Reading (3). For the last step, assign to each task a date and a time AND give to that date and time the same respect that you would give to any subject of your college education. Always keep your selection in a visible place so you don’t forget and follow thru. Remember that Clarity is Power, the more that you define your daily goals, the more chances that your brain engage in a way to make the time and remember not to skip these important “College Subjects”.

Thank you for reading and now go and work on your schedule.

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