Vote for the person you want to become
Goals are temporary, but identity is enduring.
Hey friends,
We’re now a month into 2025 and the fresh-start energy of January has started to fade. By this point, around 80% of New Year resolutions have failed.
As I’ve written about before, this usually isn’t due to a failure of discipline, willpower or motivation. It’s a failure of strategy and systems. Big outcome-focused goals aren’t enough—they ignore the process used to get us there.
But recently, I’ve been thinking about identity.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes that “the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.”
In other words, instead of saying, “I want to write a weekly newsletter” I say, “I’m becoming a writer.” Instead of “I want to lose some of that Christmas belly,” I say, “I’m someone who makes healthy choices.”
This subtle mindset shift feels really warm in my mind. It’s a feel-good way to approach our goals.
As Ali Abdaal writes, when you focus on identity, every small action becomes a vote for the person you want to become.
Eating junk today doesn’t derail my goal, because my identity isn’t tied to perfection. It’s tied to the pattern of showing up.
As we step into February, let’s let go of the resolutions that feel like they’ve slipped away and instead just ask ourselves: Who do I want to become this year?
Every action we take—no matter how small—is a step toward that person.
Goals are temporary, but identity is enduring.
Have a great week,
Ben x
P.S. Do you live in Hamilton, NZ? I’ve started a weekly newsletter for Hamiltonians, sharing things to do in the Tron this week, sent every Thursday. Subscribe here.
Two quotes I loved this week
Author C.S. Lewis on the power of identity mindset:
"We are what we believe we are."
Author and blogger Mark Manson on things to stop doing:
“The most impactful things you do are often the things you don’t do:
The distractions you don’t indulge
The toxic people you don’t engage
The opportunities you turn down
The bad relationships you leave
The fights you walk away from”
Four things worth sharing this week
🏥 News - Treasury has basically told the Government that its plan for a third medical school at Waikato University is a waste of money. Furthermore, the country cannot afford it. That advice was released this week by the Treasury under the Official Information Act, seeming to sink what was one of National’s headline election manifesto promises.
The new school was an election policy, pushed by the University and supported by the Government. But we’re a year into a new administration, and where is it? The Prime Minister says work is continuing on the business case and it will go to cabinet in the future. But unofficially, it is understood that the project has been dogged with problems and is increasingly seen as an unnecessary, costly, and bad idea.
📝 Substack - Telepathic Children Do Not Exist by David Farrier in Webworm. David’s latest captivating article, where he explored The Telepathy Tapes podcast, had me hooked. The podcast is based on the claim that nonverbal autistic kids can use their brain’s “electromagnetic properties” to read the minds of their parents and caregivers. It starts with some little claims that build and build, before landing you in territory that is just insane—by the final episode, you discover these kids are tapping into another dimension to understand every thought, language and event going on around them.
Of course, there’s a bunch of stuff science is yet to explain. But this ain’t it. People have been trying to prove telepathy for hundreds of years now and have failed miserably. The Telepathy Tapes is really just a story of scamming and lying, slowly leading you down the rabbit hole one step at a time, leading you further away from reality and before you know it, you’re believing the unbelievable.
The Telepathy Tapes isn’t a small show either—for a few days, it managed to temporarily pass Joe Rogan on the podcast charts. It’s mainstream. A mainstream display of contempt for all the values that underpin science: respect for evidence, a willingness to be wrong, a commitment to what is actually true instead of what you wish were true. It reminds me of shows like those of New Zealand psychic medium Kelvin Cruickshank: preying on people with hope. Sad, but fascinating.
🎥 YouTube video - 1 Atheist (Alex O’Connor) vs 25 Christians. I love watching a good debate. And this is a goodie. This was one of the most emotionally intelligent religious discussions I have ever seen, largely due to Alex being a great debater who seems genuinely interested in understanding why people have the convictions that they have. Alex is polite, respectful, calm, uses logic very well to explain his points, knows how to debate, and when to interrupt and when not to.
The best part of this video was every Christian disagreeing with each other’s points. My exploration of the Christian faith over the past two years has produced many valuable lessons, but two things stuck out in this debate that have recurred through much of my reading/listening/conversating: 1) the Bible is sometimes historical fact, but also just metaphors and hyperbole whenever it’s a more convenient argument, 2) most arguments are “that’s not how I interpreted it”. The exploration continues.
The 52-page report determined that copyright protection requires meaningful human authorship and creativity, not just AI generation. Even with extensive prompt engineering, simply providing text prompts to AI systems generally doesn't qualify for copyright protection. Makes sense.
The report highlighted works that combine human-authored elements with AI-generated content as copyrightable, but only for the human-created portions. Interesting.
interesting read Ben