The Year Of Un

Resolutions feel good, don't they? Like there's a fresh page to spill the ink of your life upon. New year, new me. This year is my year, for sure. They make you feel resolute, and like you're in control. Hell yeah. You get a major dopamine rush just from committing.

If you are anything like me, however, the issue lies not in identifying problems, or committing to a resolution, but in the execution. And if the execution is weak, is there another way to get what you want?

The Last Few Years

2021

Peace of Mind
Positive Net Worth

Smarter Every Day
Read 20 books

Companionship
Join two forums
Make new friends

Health
30 min outside every day
10 000 push-ups
Run 1 000 km

Writing
Write 6 blog articles (lol)
1 first draft of a novel

Not unreasonable? Maybe a bit ambitious for a single year.

Result: Read 7 books. Made no friends, posted on zero forums. EOY net worth $5k lower than start. No blog, no book, no service. Did spend a lot of time outside though, maybe 30+ mins 4-5 days a week on average.

Let's skip forward to 2024

Don't be overweight.
Be Active.

Don’t be closed off.
Be part of a community.

Don't be lost.
Be present.

Don't be broke.
Be prosperous.

Which went exactly as well as you'd think.

And 2025

Health
Cardio
Strength Training
Try something new. Kayaking?

Family
Be a good parent
Be a good husband

Fastlane
Dive into the AI hole
Launch a product

Every year I wrote goals that describe a better life. Mostly, the same better life. It's pretty clear what I want, and also pretty clear to me that this strategy hasn't been working.

[[1]]: Nope, not Einstein! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-insanity-quote/

So since it is that-time-of-year, I started having those page-turning thoughts again. And I felt, well, I'm tired of feeling bad, and tired of being broke, and tired of being a lonely introvert.

Which is when I had two realizations.

1. These thoughts feel eerily similar to thoughts I've had before
2. Most of this is centered around avoiding discomfort.

So I analyzed the problem, thinking about it long and hard. Long walks were involved. Maybe there's a new angle? Is there something I haven't tried yet? Or can we flip it on its head completely?

Learning more about the problem, reading books, setting goals, trying to establish habits haven't stuck. And with my current new-years-resolution success rate in mind, I'm going to struggle with these factors for the foreseeable future. And having "avoid discomfort" as a core tenet to build your life around just feels like a really boring way to live.

Themes

I was introduced to the concept of themes by the Cortex podcast. If you’ve never heard of yearly themes, this 6-minute stick-figure video explains it better than I can. (If you’re allergic to videos, the next paragraph is the full idea.)

A theme is a direction. When you find yourself at a crossroads, your theme suggests which branch in the road you should follow. And by the end of the year, after following your north star, you will hopefully find yourself in a better place than where you started. It doesn't require a lot of planning. Just presence. Whenever you stop and ponder whether you should consider your theme in a given situation, you've already won. Just follow your theme. Usually all we need is a nudge in the right direction, the rest has a way of working itself out.

So goals haven't been working great, let's try a theme instead. But what theme?

Time

In the end it all boils down to what you do with your time, the only finite resource we have. Bill Gates has all the money a person could ever need, you know what his greatest fear is?

[[2]]: Inside Bill's Brain: https://www.netflix.com/se-en/title/80184771

That's right. Just like the rest of us, Bill has a finite amount of time here on earth. And there is no amount of money in the world that can change that. Wild isn't it?

The average human lives for about 27,000 days, and most of that will be spent at work or sleeping. That's way less than the time it would take to do all the things you could potentially do.

And how do you determine what you should be doing with the little time you do have? The two factors that stick out to me are:

1. Is it important to you?
2. Do you like to do it?

Then it's probably worth doing.[[3n]]

[[3n]]: The most important (to me) book I read this year was Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

I feel like a good life would be one where these three circles (time available, importance, enjoyable) overlap as much as possible. What I find worth doing will be reserved for a future post.

Detour Into Identity

There are a few layers of what defines you. First of all, you have a history. a mixture of what you were born with, your genes, and all you have experienced so far in your life, your memories. This is what's called nature & nurture. For example, your genes have encoded in your nature a fight-or-flight response to danger in your behavior, which you have no choice in whether you abide by: your limbic system takes over. Your nurture has similarly resulted in patterns in your subconscious. During your life you have strengthened certain neural pathways and weakened others, built habits (good and bad), worldviews, thought patterns and biases.

All this builds up to a series of labels that you identify strongly with. Here are some of mine:

• Dad
• Introvert
• Multipotentialite
• Nerd
• Thinker
• Creative Mind

But these are more than just post-factum labels or results of reflection and categorization. These labels shape the way I see the world (for good, and for bad), and more importantly they also guide my current behavior in the here and now. Just like a theme. For example, I identify as a thinker, and you would find it very hard to get me to express an opinion on something I hadn't taken time to think through already. If someone were to express a disdain for nerds, I would be offended, since I'm a nerd. These labels are part of what make me, me.

So can we change it?

The Game Plan

So if identity is the bottom layer that defines what you are, and time is all we have, what do we get?

This finally brings us back to my theme for 2026. What I have been doing hasn't been working, so it's time to try something else. Something opposite.

For 2026 I will assume a new identity: Un-Hampus. Where Hampus is conflict avoidant, Un-Hampus seeks it out. Hampus has struggled for years to establish a morning routine, Un-Hampus just gets up at 5 AM because that's what winners do. Hampus doesn't feel like he has his shit together, Un-Hampus doesn't give a shit whether he has his shit together or not; he's busy doing important things that he enjoys.

[[5n]]: You figure it out, I give up on this attribution thing.

This year my north star is not to shift habits or patterns, or what I spend my time on, but my identity itself.

Un-Hampus organizes his time and his life around what is important to him, not what he wants to avoid. He does what he wants to do, not what he thinks he should do. He doesn't feel like shit, since he takes care of his body. He has accepted the fact that he prefers being alone anyway, so the few friends he has is plenty. He doesn't fret over finances because fretting is anathema to his way of life. He doesn't get flustered when talking to strangers, over-analyze or procrastinate. He trusts his gut and spends his limited time[[6n]] on what actually matters, and he does his best to avoid the rest.

[[6n]]: He's literally only here a year, remember? Tick tock.

The whole point of the year of Un is to reflect on as many aspects of myself as I can[[7n]]. And then consider whether it's something I would like to keep. Or if not, it is something Un-Hampus wouldn't do. Therefore, I won't do it. Any behavior, action, thought pattern, anything I say, or do, or think at all. It is up for reconsideration. That's what the year of Un is about.

[[7n]]: Just typing that out makes me dread the mental exhaustion of such an exercise. Lucky for me Un-Hampus doesn't dread things.

The Year Of Un

Here are some examples of behaviors that could be triggered by a doing-the-opposite-mindset.

Actions

• Un-Hampus does things immediately when they surface.
• Un-Hampus makes things. Flexes the creative muscle. Puts things out in the world for others to see.
• Un-Hampus doesn't let his introversion get in his way. He is part of several communities, and attends third places.
• Un-Hampus EATS BREAKFAST.

Thoughts

• Un-Hampus trusts his gut. He doesn't hesitate, fret or over-think.
• Un-Hampus only applies analysis (hammer) for nail-shaped problems.
• Un-Hampus doesn't get overwhelmed when he finds himself in the ball pit.

Words

• Un-Hampus is an adept wordsmith and storyteller.
• Un-Hampus shares his words with others on brimside.com.
• Un-Hampus doesn't feel the need to be funny in all situations. Un-Hampus wasn't bullied as a kid, and he didn't use humor as a defense mechanism.
• Un-Hampus only uses profanities in extreme affect. His children don't have to tell him not to use bad words.

[[8n]]: And this quote is not actually by Aristotle! It's Will Durant paraphrasing separate passages of Aristotle with similar meaning. See https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-time-is-a-misattribution-66356f22843d

Conclusion

So for the next year I have resolved only to do things differently, oppositely, and to do new things that I wouldn't have otherwise. Whenever an opportunity presents itself to do something I normally wouldn't, I'm going to take it.

But Hampus[[9n]], you might say. I know you. Won't you get tired of this? 
You know, a few weeks or months will pass, and you'll have moved on to the next thing.

[[9n]]: Un-Hampus, if I may.

Yeah maybe. Probably, even.

But I have to do something. And it's just an experiment anyways.

Success in this experiment is not assuming a new personality, but rather discovering whether identity-assumption is an effective method of achieving desired outcomes. And maybe, just maybe, I'll realize along the way that the grass wasn't greener on the other side for certain aspects of me. And that the version that I am is just fine, better than the alternative even.

See you in a year.