The way you will quantify this year. How many books you want to say you’ve read. How many projects you want to say you’ve completed. How many relationships with friends and family you want to have fostered or rekindled. How you spent your days.

Before we unpack this statement from Brianna, I’d like to begin with a caveat. These things she mentions above are purely illustrative. Each one of us will have different metrics to measure ourselves by when it’s time for a year-end audit. Secondly, I understand that the internet today is overflowing with regurgitated self-help content. I am, admittedly, guilty of contributing to that ecosystem myself, so dear friends, take what you love and leave what you don’t.

And if, by the end of this read, you find yourself feeling called out or slapped in the face, know that it’s a slap of love from a fellow culprit.

Nearly everyone I know has experienced the “new year high” at least once. You know the one. New planner. New gym membership. New vision board. New “this is my year” speech. And nearly every one of those people has fallen off by mid-March.

There’s something strangely satisfying about telling people you’re going to write the book, launch the business, start the podcast, or finally get in shape. Planning gives us a premature sense of accomplishment.

We get a hit of dopamine from imagining the future version of ourselves long before we’ve done anything to become them. I believe I speak for many of us when I say nothing feels quite as good as lying in bed at midnight planning a complete life rebrand on Pinterest.

Planning, however, is not the problem.

Getting stuck in the planning phase is.

When we delay action in the name of preparation, we risk losing any momentum to move forward, and we end up with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Perhaps that’s why Brianna’s question is so powerful.

How will you quantify this year?

Most of us treat that as a January-only question. We answer it once while cutting up pictures for our vision board and writing down a few ambitious goals, and then don’t revisit it until December, when we’re wondering where the year went.

I think that’s the wrong approach.

“How will I quantify this year?” should become part of your regular train of thought. It should occupy your mind as frequently as worrying about what people think of you, wondering whether that boy is ever going to text you back, or convincing yourself that you need a flatter stomach.

Brianna argues that one of the greatest forms of self-love is self-awareness, followed by the choice to become better, and I couldn’t agree more.

Quantifying yourself based on what you were able to achieve may sound like unnecessary pressure, but I’d beg to differ because who are we if not constantly changing and growing?

The truth is, most of us already know the kind of life we want.

There is a reason you feel what you feel when you look at photos of a life that looks desirable to you. You are constantly scheming and plotting your self-improvement, often more than you would want to admit.

We are constantly collecting clues about the person we want to become, often more than we realize and contrary to popular belief, I don’t think that’s always envy. Sometimes it’s just vision.

We all want a good life. We’d love the fulfilling career, meaningful relationships, financial freedom, healthy bodies, peaceful minds, and yes, perhaps a few nice things to accompany them. All this, and yet we do very little to make it a reality.

So, when you ask yourself how you will quantify this year, add real numbers to that story because we cannot measure growth without something measurable to work with. And it does not have to be grandiose. I am not asking you to cure cancer or receive the Nobel Prize. Right where you are is an opportunity to grow with what you have.

The timing of this piece may seem peculiar considering we are seven months deep into the year, but I hope that helps land my point. You do not need a new calendar to start a new life. Today can be New Year’s Eve if you please, and you will have no interjection from me.

Take some time to look at where you are now and ask yourself how you want to quantify at the end of the year. How many steps will you say you walked? How many applications will you say you submitted? How many rejections will you have moved on from? How many hours will you dedicate to investing in something your future self will thank you for? Give your goals a name, a reason and a number.

My only request is that you do this for you and according to you because, when all is said and done, come December, it will be you and the regret of an unfulfilled desire.

With love,

Alpha

As a Gen Z, chronically online individual, I find myself adopting—and I use the term loosely—a new ‘vocal stim’ every other day. One of my all-time favourites is, “God abeg, I don’t wanna be a mechanic, I wanna be a baller.” Interestingly, that TikTok sound is what has inspired my very first Substack. So grab yourself a warm beverage and indulge me for a little while, would you?

I got a text from my dad this morning telling me he had just gotten a promotion. My dad’s emotional expressions can be quite scanty, so when I tell you he sounded over the moon, do me a favour and visualise just how big of a deal this actually is.

As we talked, it hit me just how long he has worked at that company and how I have passively watched him rise from what we can call the absolute bottom to where he is today. If you’re interested in metrics, it took him 13 years at that company alone.

You may think I’m biased because he is, in fact, my dad, but in that moment, as he listed all the perks that came with this promotion, I felt so proud, so inspired, and I gained a whole new appreciation for the process.

Our generation has lost its love for the step-by-step.

Gone are the days when people prepared themselves to climb the ladder. We want the dream body, the nice car, the big house, the perfect love…but the only problem is, we want it today. Scratch that, we want it now.

To be a mechanic means getting your hands dirty. It means changing into your greasy overalls and sliding underneath a car to take down an engine piece by piece before painstakingly putting it back together. To be a mechanic means failing over and over again and sometimes even declaring a vehicle beyond repair. To be a mechanic means waiting. It means being meticulous and precise, or heaven forbid, filling the coolant tank with brake fluid.

These days, young men would rather gamble to “retire for life” than take a six-month web development course. Young women would rather fall prey to the fattest father of four than spend a year learning how to do hair. Apple is releasing new upgrades faster than the girls can say no, and my, oh my, what a time it is to be alive on Beyoncé’s internet.

The slimming teas. The 30-day wealth-building eBooks that somehow cost $120 on Amazon. The acne cream promising glass skin in seven days or less, if you’re lucky.

Logically, if you look closely enough, most of these things aren’t even scientifically possible. But if people keep selling them, surely someone must be buying.

We ought to stop and ask ourselves, What’s the catch?

Say I lose all my belly fat in 10 days…what’s in it for you, vendor?

I believe there is a hidden price to pay every time you choose the easy way around instead of the long way through. You sacrifice that sense of ownership, which in turn breeds a sense of care.

The fact is, if I save for two years to buy my first car, you better believe I won’t be hitting curbs every other Tuesday. If I work out five days a week to lose fat and tone up, not only will I develop discipline and self-respect, but I’ll also gain heaps of knowledge about nutrition and healthy eating. If I decide today to work with what I already have: my hands, my mind, my words—I could be saving myself from a lifetime of medication and long queues at the health centre.

Morgan Freeman acted for decades before becoming a household name. Viola Davis spent years building her craft before receiving the recognition she deserved in her late forties and fifties. Strive Masiyiwa fought a landmark legal battle for years to break Zimbabwe’s telecommunications monopoly before he was finally able to launch Econet.

The list is endless, but you get the gist.

Don’t fall into the trap of instant gratification while missing out on the growth, resilience, and foundation that are built in the in-between.

I think the lesson here is simple:

To be a baller, one must first be a mechanic.

With love,

Alpha