The same. But different?
E173: For 2025 - 5 Unexpected Year Transition Traditions
Brooke is surprised to receive a letter on her birthday … from herself! Linart expresses gratitude to those who have been a part of his year … and sends it more intimately as a short personal video message.
These are year-end practices that caught my attention in the past week. Why? For the same reason that I still can’t get Finneas’ lyrics1 for Break My Heart Again out of my head:
“Kissed me half a DECADE later”.
It’s twisty. And UNEXPECTED. And that is all it takes to get me hooked!
What is more, it inspires me to try these ideas myself.
Obvious to you. Amazing to others.
— Derek Sivers “Hell Yeah or No.”
Three “amazing to others” ideas:
I gorge data. I am connected to so many people on LinkedIn, Substack, and Instagram that I invariably trip over some gems that support Derek Sivers’ quote. (Links to all the posts below)
Brooke’s FutureMe letter
The “unexpected” was the honesty and transparency as
wrote her annual birthday message to herself2. She included her soundtrack in her yearend recap to her future self of a year older, and then signed off her missive with a mission:Go forth and be bold; Be present, be an advocate, and find balance; I love you, Brooke.
I’m giving myself the mission to talk nicely to myself this year.
Linart’s video message
“You changed the way that I think, the way that I work.”
wraps each year with gratitude by sending a personal message.His three-minute video to me detailed the specific ways our few conversations earlier this year and “reading your essays about your mom” in these weekly (news)letters had helped him navigate through what started as a challenging year.
“You opened up the opportunities available [when teaching GenZ] … By being able to inspire the current generation, the ones who will be the future leaders ... you gave more meaning to the work that I do.”
I really missed my mother in that moment. I found myself reaching to forward the clip to her so she could see her influence ripple across more countries, more generations. In my year-end reflection, I’d been questioning the value of publicly sharing my [private] pain that accompanies the pleasure and privilege of being my mother’s daughter. Linart’s mention of my mother part in his journey allayed those misgivings.
His video caught me while I was feeling particularly reflective, vulnerable, and re-evaluating my place and space in the world. When he said “… just knowing you, by having you exist in this world, where we can be connected …” Gosh, darn! Where did that tear come from?
I unexpectedly realized that Encouragers3 also need encouragement. So thank you, Linart. "You will never know … " how timely those words were, with your accompanying smile. And PS. You did all the hard work! I’ve shared similar suggestions with others. You actioned our conversations.
Linart’s video has inspired me to lean into using a quick video message where a text might have sufficed. I aim to explicitly thank those who change the way I think. I won’t assume they are already aware of their impact on my day and life.
Karena’s Annual Review in a Shoe Box
You know what they say … you always seek to fix your own flaws. I fail at organizing knick-knacks and memories. There, I admit it - I’m a memory-hoarder! I’d casually mentioned the story of our Annual Review in a Shoe Box tradition while explaining [digital] data organization and the concept of [idea] convergence and divergence.4
But, it seems our real-world haphazard collection system of collapsing and shoe-horning a year’s worth of experiences into a box struck a chord with many Tilt members - as many as four of you remarked on my family’s tradition in the past two months. So I thought I’d share it under the “Obvious to me” category. Dumping our paraphernalia into an available shoe box was the simplest, low-lift, high pay-back activity … and I was surprised by how our simple hack has stuck in everyone else’s memory banks.
In a nutshell: At the start of each year, I stick a label on a shoebox with the year. As the year progresses, we dump all our memories (airline ticket stubs, champagne corks, conference lanyards, postcards, rose petals) that would otherwise clutter our drawers and desks. At year-end, we upend the box and take a slow walk reminiscing through all that has happened during that year.
I’ve just put a lid on 2024. It holds the joy of time spent with my mother on the beach, family weddings, time in Goa, and then the layers of grief as we process losing her. And then day-to-day living from the mundane to the magnificent, everything equally memorable - paint swatches for the bathroom walls, sympathy cards, a parking stub from visiting our son downtown, receipt from lunch after a lakeside walk with friends, the McD receipt from the rest stop on I90 when moving my youngest to Brooklyn, a walking map for Brugge, a playbill for the symphony with my daughter.
What will find its way into the 2025 box? How much will go to plan and how much will be a surprise?
Two bonus ideas:
Gretchen Rubin’s Bingo Card
Gretchen Rubin (yes, her of the “The days are long but the years are short” fame who recently joined team Empty Nest or as I prefer team “Mother of Dragons”) created a 25-part bingo card that caught my eye as a playful way to deploy the 2025 goals that came out of my 1000-day radar exercise. (It also pinged back to the Bingo card I’d created to help my readers navigate through the content in my 179+ editions of Tilt the Future!)
What was surprising? An invitation to bring an element of play into my year-end rituals.
The Power of Compounding from Mesha and the Minimalists
New Year, new you. I could tidy up, or I can do spring cleaning with a twist:
I just discovered this challenge where you declutter the number of items = the day of the month. Mesha (see the reel below) says she will end up 496 items freer. [1+2+3+ … +29+30+31 = 496]. This attracts the math head in me!
I know it isn’t officially compounding, but if the “space in one head increases in proportion to the space cleared around you” then I think that is “interest”ing enough, n’est-ce pas?
But just in case you needed more 2025 math …
Year-end is a transition too
Transition skills are a core pillar of our conversations on how to equip our future generations to become the leaders of 2050 and 2075. New Year traditions, last year reviews, New Year’s resolutions … all these fall under those cyclical transitions. Point this out to your teen who might be struggling with ways to manage some bigger life transitions looming on their horizons. (Want more conversation on the skills that allow us to tread water while we navigate from the old to the new? Click on Liminality)
This belongs squarely in the category of 21st-century skills.
PS. The first GenBeta baby joined the human race on January 1, 2025. Now I feel truly old!
2025 conversation starter:
What’s your favorite end-of-year tradition?
asked that question recently, and it felt fitting to slot it into this edition. Here is your turn to inspire us with the traditions that inspire you.:
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Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
Until next week …
Karena
These posts and links inspired this edition:
My little time capsule by
The personal touch - sending a video message by
Gretchen Rubin’s 25 for '25:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gretchenrubin_revealed-my-25-for-25-list-ive-made-activity-7280681034176729089-uNKa?Mesha following a Minimalist’s challenge:
My April 2023 post “Living Life Fast and Slow” explains our Shoe Box tradition
Derek Sivers quote and article: https://sive.rs/obvious
“Break My Heart Again” lyrics and music by Finneas. I tripped over that ONE unexpected phrase and permanently planted Finneas and his sister Billie Eilish on my Spotify playlist. I am mesmerized by the way they approach words and the language of music. Half a semitone on a note that makes “What was I made for?” more haunting; sampling in the sound from an Australian pedestrian crossing signal. Genius.
Brooke uses futureme.org to email these to her future self. Some people use them to write weekly letters to their children to be delivered after their 18th birthday.
used it to write a future-delivered letter to his wife on their first anniversary. The uses are endless!“Encouragers” rather than influencers. A term borrowed from my sister who inspires and encourages me.
Richard Saul Wurman, architect (like someone else we know who loves words and organization aka ), founder of TED talks, who coined the term “information architect”, from his 1989 book “Information Anxiety” :
“Information may be infinite, however… the organization of information is finite as it can only be organized by LATCH: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, or Hierarchy. I’ve tried a thousand times to find other ways to organize, but I always end up using one of these five.”
https://parsonsdesign4.wordpress.com/resources/latch-methods-of-organization/?utm_medium=website&utm_source=archdaily.com
Brooke inspired me to write a letter to myself, addressed for end of 2025. I was scared to write it (knowing some big changes ahead) but it felt great to know that I was rooting for me :)
P.S. I agree that Linart's video message was so so so so incredibly special!
I unexpectedly realized that Encouragers³ also need encouragement. This is a valuable observation Karena. You do so much to encourage others, including me! Thank you for your posts and your wisdom. I love the shoebox idea! Brilliant.