Not everything is a 10.

Resolution 1. Not everything is a 10. Not everything needs to be a 10. I’ve never been one to obsess over New Year’s resolutions and yoking myself with promises to ‘just be better than last year’. But alas, here I sit on January 3rd 2025, in a cafe in Brooklyn - and I can’t help but think there’s an opportunity in a fresh clock. A nice round number, a clean start from which to measure. There’s a beauty in recognizing the hands at midnight as a bookmark.

Projecting forward a year from now, what might it look like to say, “I began doing such and such in January and now, 12 months later, look how far I’ve come.” So, where does that leave me? What are my measurable intentions? Well, I can begin here - I want to accomplish a lot this year and push myself to excel in my top skill areas.

Ah, and just like that, I’ve lost the poetry of the entire thing. Excel, be productive, work, work, work, and achieve. But that’s hardly what I’m going for. There are a great many things that I’m good at - from music to programming, business to languages - and if I could dedicate one wish for myself - it would be to push each of these areas along further and with intention.

The difficulty up to now has been my all or nothing attitude - I won’t do it at all, or by god, it must be a 10. Perfection. Done to the nth extent with no notes. It’s an inhibitive attitude in the end - because the reality is that when beginning any pursuit, learning anything new at all, it’s exceedingly difficult, if at all possible to produce the perfect 10.

And so, I once read (or heard?) someone posit the concept of deciding to what degree of perfection the end product needs to be, ahead of time. The email to customer service? Perhaps we can phone that home with a 5 - communicate the issue and keep it moving. Our first draft of an essay? Perhaps that’s a 7 - get it on the page and communicate the ideas clearly enough to allow for friendly feedback and editing. The proof of concept for our new feature to an investor? A 9 - yeah let’s not look incompetent at game time - but let’s also save some capacity to actually be able to present it the following day - go to bed at midnight rather than 4 a.m. trying to eke out the last bit.

The scale and effort toward asymptotic perfection is non-linear, with those final degrees almost always being exponentially more demanding than the first few. As such, if I am to rack up my XP (experience points) in all the things I love and have set my mind to this year - effort management ought to be an integral part of that process.

So, here’s to a year of discernment - phoning some shit in, half-assing others, nailing a few, and absolutely crushing the rest. Not everything is a ten, nor does it need to be. I’d reckon growth, progress, and achievement owe more to and attitude of ‘just getting it done’ than they do to perfection. So cheers to that and happy new year.