Fix the papercuts

I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who’s into New Year’s resolutions or not. Maybe you find them silly, impractical, or even a little nerve-wracking.

Personally speaking, I have almost no success setting goals like “go to the gym three times a week” or “get 8 hours of sleep every weeknight”. They’re easy to miss because life happens.

Rather than creating rigid goals, I’ve taken a page from My Brother, My Brother and Me and have tried to use “themes” instead. It’s nice to have something broad that can set the direction for the year instead of feeling guilty when the diet fizzles out or the gym membership goes unused.

My theme for 2026 is to fix the papercuts.

The things you just deal with

There are so many things in my life I “work around” without even thinking twice about it.

• The wobbly door on the mailbox

• A filing cabinet filled with old cords. I’ll need them eventually!

• Clumsily tracking my daughter’s allowance in Notes

• The toppling stack of reusable shopping bags in our pantry

Everything works. It’s not like something is broken or missing or catastrophic—but I have little papercuts I set to the side because, well, whatever, it’s life!

This year my theme is to be more conscious and say, “you know what, this is annoying and I’m going to take 10 minutes to change this”. Not because I think trashing old cords will solve my life problems (I swear I’ll need Firewire one day!), but because addressing papercuts—small annoyances in my day-to-day life—adds up over time!

What about the big stuff?

Yeah, I’ve had “redo the landscaping” and “clean out the garage” on my todo lists for a while now. And, sure, they do need to get done!

But these aren’t “papercuts”. These are projects that will take me several hours at least and a whole weekend at most.

Knocking out a papercut or two is a good way to get motivated to jump onto the big stuff. Sometimes you just need a little inertia!