For the past few years, I’ve been loosely following the recommendation of a podcast I listen to and using yearly themes instead of New Year’s resolutions. In some ways, it’s the same thing in different clothes, but usually, it works for me. Ideally, a theme is both specific enough to drive action and flexible enough to encompass apparently disparate parts of your life.
It doesn’t always work. Last year, I tried to make my theme discipline, which just utterly backfired. Instead of being a useful talisman I could summon to inspire myself, it became a spectre floating above my head, constantly reminding me of the ways I was not and am not disciplined, which is a great way to end up skipping yoga class to re-watch American Vandal on Netflix and eat Chex mix.
I’m trying again, though, with a less loaded theme. And, unlike last year, my year ahead tarot spread for 2020 didn’t prominently include the Devil. I’m feeling hopeful.
2020 is my Year of Input.
Where problems come from
One of my original internet favs, Austin Kleon (author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going), has a lot to say about input and output. His most common refrain: “Problems of output are problems of input.”
In November, Kleon shared an excerpt from a podcast interview with writer Ted Gioia that spent most of November and December bouncing around in my head, influencing my planning for the whole year. Gioia said:
In your life, you will be evaluated on your output. Your boss will evaluate you on your output. If you’re a writer like me, the audience will evaluate you on your output.
But your input is just as important. If you don’t have good input, you cannot maintain good output.
The problem is no one manages your input. The boss never cares about your input. The boss doesn’t care about what books you read. Your boss doesn’t ask you what newspapers you read. The boss doesn’t ask you what movies you saw or what TV shows or what ideas you consume.
The past few years, for me, have been marked by some noticeable problems of output. I haven’t been writing, even though it repeatedly appears on my lists of “things I would do.” I’ve struggled to maintain my yoga practice, even though I know that a regular practice makes the rest of my life easier. And, over the past few years, I’ve struggled with more physiological things, like a shorter attention span and body image problems.
So, in 2020, I want to take a look at my inputs to see whether I can improve my output.
Input is also a verb
It’s not just about consumption, though. I also want to take a look at where I am investing my time, energy, and money--at what I am inputting into different projects and areas of my life.
This is kind of the opposite side of the coin. I want to put my time into projects, relationships, and practices that I either find rewarding or that have rewarding results in my life. (I don’t love clearing the shower drain, but boy, do I love having a clean shower drain.)
A lot of these projects haven’t really been getting the kind of input that I want over the past few years. Writing is a prime example. Over the past few years, I haven't made time to write, and that’s the core reason I haven’t written much. I hope that reading, listening to, and watching higher-quality things will help inspire me, but if I actually want to make something, I need to make sure that I’m putting in the work—the time, the energy, the everything—to actually do it. Writers need to read, but writers also need to write.
The short version
2020 is my Year of Input. It’s a year for thinking critically about what I consume, and how, and why. It’s a year for investing time and energy into projects and work that inspire me.
It’s a year for thinking carefully about what I’m putting into my life and what I’m putting my life into.