I live in the UK and so January is grim. Christmas is over and all that’s left to look forward to is months of grey until the sun finally pierces the clouds sometime towards the end of March. To make matters worse, tradition dictates I should prime myself for subsequent disappointment by announcing resolutions designed to make me a better person.
Because I write about gadgets, phones and tech, mine are about that. Feel free to steal the ideas yourself, but don’t @ me in December when you’ve failed to complete any and end up desperately asking ChatGPT about how to blaze through New Year’s resolutions you’d totally forgotten about for 12 months.
1. Be better at sleep
If ever there was a resolution designed for failure, it’s this one. But also, if there was a resolution I absolutely need to stick to, it’s… this one. I spend far too much of my life being a bit tired. Mostly, that’s because I’m a lot rubbish at going to sleep when I should, preferring instead to faff with tech. So I aim to use more of it to badger me into better habits, whether that’s apps, Downtime, using the SnoozeBand my wife bought for me, or training my iPhone to angrily say “I can’t do that, Dave!” when I start trying to watch YouTube at gone 11pm.
2. Actually play games rather than just buy new ones
I’ve been playing video games almost since the dawn of the medium. The snag is that my favourite one these days appears to be Buy A New Game Or Console And Add It To The Pile Rather Than Play It. Switch games. Retro consoles. Evercade carts. App Store and Steam titles. They’re all coalescing into a guilt pile that threatens to one day topple over and lead to an obituary reading: “Craig Grannell was sadly crushed under an enormous pile of games and gadgets, but it’s the way he’d have wanted to go.” For the record: no. No, it really isn’t.
3. Automate more stuff
I recall a friend once telling me he couldn’t get his fancy smart Christmas tree lights to talk to his home network. I felt smug that mine turned on when I pressed a physical button. These days, though, my resolve against smart kit is breaking. The house now has smart heating, a smart door bell and smart plugs. All of those have meaningfully improved wellbeing and saved time. So I want more. Expect my first 2027 resolution to be “throw every piece of smart tech in existence into a ravine,” mind.
4. Use tech for the real world
I’m increasingly troubled by the ephemeral nature of digital content and how tech makes it easy to avoid reality by kidding yourself that solely chatting with folks online is enough. I’ve always been terrible at actually going outside, and so I resolve to use tech to help make a more tactile home and outward-facing me. That means everything from printing more photos to having my iPhone nag me when it’s been too many months since a friend and I last had a pint.
5. Do all the things I failed at last year
I said this last year, and am saying it again, even if my hit rate wasn’t amazing. (I did at least sort a personalised backup archive and start buying CDs again. All the other stuff? Ahahaha!)
The danger, though, is this will eventually create a terrifying ‘resolutionsception’, a self-referential tangle where each year’s good intentions build on the last, growing increasingly dense, immense, untamed and unhinged, until the whole lot collapses into a universe-destroying singularity that somehow detonates while making a noise that sounds uncannily similar to “oh, bugger”.
Sorry about that.
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