Early in January, I always feel as if I was living on a forgotten island eastward of the International Date Line. The new year seems to reach other people so much earlier than me: Somehow, superhuman efficiency allowed them to achieve their old-year-goals, prepare for Christmas, celebrate, look back and reflect, look forward and plan, and make a whole bunch of resolutions – all in the short month of December! So they’re ready to kick off 2014 as soon as January arrives. Not me.

Some time ago, I stopped worrying about my slowness.

Figuring that December was becoming stressful if I tried to do too many things at once, I decided to focus on celebration and leave the planning for January, a month that’s well-spent in solitary confinement anyway. ((Here in Germany at least, as long as you have a good heating.))

The Seeds of the Deeds

So now that other people’s resolutions are already forgotten or put on hold until 2015, I slowly take off my thinking cap and emerge from my cabin in the woods with something akin to a letter of intent. The document doesn’t entail any classic rules or resolutions, but rather a very broad change compass for the year, with a few items of fun and inspiration mixed in. ((“First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.”))

I decided to call this document Moderate Proposals for Daunting, Delightful and Dilettantish Deeds to Pursue in the New Year, and thanks to popular demand ((Hi mum!)) I’m going to share these deeds with you in a short series of posts. Take them as strategies and tactics to be more (un)productive, have some fun, take up useful habits and live a somewhat more interesting life in 2014.

Among others, we’ll look at ideas for better travel, messier houses, improved asset management ((Fear not, this is probably not what you’re expecting!)), and remedies to armchair philosophizing, all based on real-world experiences by yours truly. But to get started, I’d like to make a first proposal and invite you to introduce more cheat days in your life!

More on that in the next post, up in a few minutes.