I spent the final week of 2023 in Massachusetts, in a cozy home amid trees with my fiance’s parents, sister, and sister’s newborn. I thought I would spend this week buried in books. And while I read and wrote a fair amount, it didn’t come close to how much more “productive” I thought I would be.

In fact, I grappled with this sense of “not being productive enough” all week. I read, then felt guilty for not doing other things in huge chunks of free time. I scratched the surface of a few checklist items but didn’t bring any of them fully to completion because I felt like I was stealing from my undistracted reading time. When else in the year do I get to shield myself in a cozy room with no one demanding anything of me?

I lingered in an in-between, low effort state. I felt dissatisfied at not having finished X books or written more (though the “more” is undefined). My fiance entered my “study” room at regular intervals, only half jokingly demanding that I give him an account of how productive I’d been, how I’d spent my time. This dissatisfaction I felt with myself, and my fiance’s all too serious expectations, prompted me to think more about what “productivity” really means and why I always felt that I was missing the goalpost unless I had external pressure.

I found I had vague ideas for what I wanted to get done, without properly orienting myself in the why. Nor did I consider the time of the year, its particular rhythm, and the mental state I was in after a year of non-stop anxiety, flights, and busyness.

It’s easy to try and impose an arbitrary form and expected output from my days. But without the proper orientation and prioritization, it’s not a surprise that the form fails to hold.

So before diving in to “read X books and write X pages,” the considerations could have been:

• What will be the most meaningful way to spend this break after a long, intense year?

• What activities align with this time? What makes me feel more connected to myself, my surroundings, others around me?

• What will help me reflect, absorb, and start the new year in the freshest way?

Better thought-of answers were the following:

• I’m going to read X novel by Stephen King because I’d been looking forward to absorbing myself in his writing (it feels so delicious against the backdrop of a New England landscape)

• I’m going to go for plenty of walks and just take in the fresh air I don’t get in New York

• I’m going to reflect and write about the good things I’m taking with me from this year

• Nothing else

After banging my head against the wall with failed “productivity” in the first half of the week, and identifying where the mismatch was, I found it easier to relax. The rest was much more satisfying and appropriate to the dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s Eve—curled under blankets, absorbed in Carrie or listening to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, musing about the different meanings I was extracting compared to my high school self.

The calmness of the holidays are now over. Still, the importance of why has not waned. Just in time for the inevitable New Year’s resolutions, my biggest and only resolution this year is to ask why and cut dead weight—from words, tasks, travels, purchases, and everywhere else it applies.

This year is focused on doing the right things, doing them more intensely, and feeling lighter.