I'm Planning to Stop Living on Hard Mode

Here's how I'm bringing more ease into my life in 2025.

Welcome to Making Time. Each week, I share thoughts and ideas for making more time for yourself by building creative energy and establishing rituals and practices. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

We spent New Year’s Eve this year at our neighbors’ house, 6 of us sitting around a table covered in snacks, drinking cocktails made with their homemade pine bud syrup, a fire in the wood stove keeping us warm.

When midnight rolled around, we each shared a little about how we planned to make this a good year. I announced that my watchword for this year is “easy.”

“I’m planning to make my life easier this year,” I said.

“How are you going to do that?” was the response.

“I don’t know.” And the truth is, I really don’t know. And for once, I’m ok with that.

See, I’m a sucker for goals and resolutions. You know those videos you come across on YouTube of 20-somethings unveiling 7-part systems for setting and achieving goals, managing time, conducting an annual review, and otherwise doing whatever work is necessary for planning YOUR BEST YEAR EVER? Normally, I can’t get enough of that stuff. It’s my drug of choice.

But this year, I’m going to try something a little different. I’m going to try not doing everything the hard way. As much as possible, I’m going to let life be easy.

Let me clarify. When I say “easy”, I don’t mean “without effort”. I love projects, I love making things, and the effort that goes into them is half the point.

What I mean is ceasing the habit of making things less enjoyable, more difficult, and more task-like than they need to be. I mean a sense of unclenching, of releasing this constant sense of resistance to how things are. I mean giving up more control and listening to my heart at any given moment instead of trying to optimize.

There’s an idea, planted early on in our lives, that only things that are difficult are really worth doing. Hard work becomes addictive, and the more positive external results we see from it, the more we cling to it.

My goal is not so much to stop working hard, but to stop desperately clinging to hard work. Instead, I’d like to follow my energy and enthusiasm and allow things to unfold.

Another way to think about this: life is hard enough as it is. Shocks, tragedies, and loss are inevitable. Why should I add to it? Why shouldn’t I welcome joy wherever it shows up?

What if this were easy?

Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals:

“And so instead of asking how to summon the energy or motivation or self-discipline to do something that matters to you, it’s often more helpful to ask: what if this might be a lot easier than I’d been assuming?”

I don’t have a plan or a system, for once. Just an idea to come back to: What if this were easy?

Here are a few things I’ve been playing with to see what feels easy:

• Deleting media, newsletters, apps, and feeds that no longer speak to me. I’ve removed a lot of stuff that encourages me to consume more, lowers my energy, or just makes me feel overwhelmed.

• Buying more fiction and books I want to read for pure enjoyment. And not worrying about the size of my TBR pile.

• Recognizing my own rhythms throughout the day and working with them rather than forcing things.

• Doing things (especially on this holiday break) because I feel inspired and energized to do them. I’ve been asking myself what I really want to do in my free time and the answers can be really surprising. Sometimes I want to lay on the couch with a book, but sometimes I actually want to tidy my nightstand for 10 minutes or put away laundry (my least favorite chore).

• Remembering to give myself daily treats.

• When I have a generous impulse towards someone else, acting on it instead of overthinking it. This was also a revelation from Oliver Burkeman, who points out that we often fail to do small acts of kindness because we overthink the implementation, and then put it off. Classic example of making things harder than they need to be.

Gordy and me on our way to celebrate Christmas and Hannukah with family.

Thank you for being here to welcome 2025 with me. May you be safe, may you be healthy, may you be happy, may you live with ease.

PS: I’m also planning to share some new stuff with you that brings me joy, including food, crafty things, books, and photos and snippets from life in 2025. I hope you enjoy!

Thanks for reading Making Time. If you’re new here, you can subscribe for free to receive new posts each week.