The Psychology of your 20s - 370. Your year for doing less and achieving more

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

At the start of every year, I choose a theme - not just goals, but a guiding philosophy. For 2026, that theme is doing less and achieving more. In this episode, we explore why focus beats busyness, why saying no creates better outcomes, and how choosing depth over overwhelm can actually lead to more success.  Our discussion includes:  Why a yearly theme is more powerful than traditional goals The psychology of intrinsic motivation The importance of  focused vs. scattered effort How to choose 1–2 true priorities for the year The surprising psychology of rest How to plan a year that feels intentional, not exhausting Happy listening!  ORDER MY BOOK Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year.

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psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode, back for the first episode of 2026. That feels bizarre to say, 2026. Like the years really do start coming and they don't stop coming. But I have a good feeling about this year, like a really good feeling, not to jinx anything. I'm also very superstitious, but the energy I just feel for the next 12 months feels amazing and I'm hoping either you're feeling that as well or perhaps my unrealistic delusional enthusiasm is rubbing off on you. As some of my long-time listeners may know, especially if you have been here for maybe more than a year or two at the start of, you

every new year, I personally like to set a theme for myself for the 12 months ahead. And I like to share that theme with you guys. Obviously, I also set personal goals and I have personal ambitions for myself that I'm like privately working on. But my theme is like the overall tone I like to bring to every decision for this year, every crossroad, my daily choices, my daily behaviors. I use it as a guiding philosophy. And the reason I do this is actually based on this psychology paper. I read a few years back on what it means to live a good life. And what people who deem themselves as having a good life do or have or think about and what they also avoid.

And in this paper, it was published in 2021. They looked at over 200 people over an entire year. and essentially what they found was that people who articulated a grounding belief system and had a strong personal philosophy for their lives and for their year were more motivated, they were happier, they experienced greater psychological health, and they made more progress towards their goals compared to people who, you know, didn't have a guiding philosophy or just had goals by themselves. The reason why is because it didn't just improve their motivation, it improved autonomous, intrinsic motivation. This is the strongest motivational source and it comes from genuine enjoyment, fulfillment, personal value alignment, rather than external expectations, rather than a fear of punishment, a fear of rejection. we know that time and time again, people who pursue things because they genuinely set their soul on fire,

because it genuinely inspires them and they find a way to do it and make it fun, they are more likely to find success and more likely to feel successful. Having these higher order values they sometimes call them also helps with successful goal setting because you're basically not putting any filler items on your 2026 goal list. Everything comes from this theme, everything comes from the heart, everything comes from the core value and core guidelines that are driving you from this year. That is obviously a long tangent. Basically, it's just a way of saying that if you want to be successful,

however success looks for you, but specifically if you want to be successful in your goals, having a theme first and foremost is important. Last year our theme was your year for trusting yourself, trusting your instincts, knowing what's right for you, what's wrong for you, trusting your ability to endure hard things. And this year is your year for doing less and achieving more. Think being picky about what you choose to take on. think making your time and your energy quite an expensive exclusive thing.

Think really devoting yourself to one or two big ambitions or projects instead of feeling like you have to be a jack of all trades master of none. Think especially fighting the pressure to do everything, especially in your 20s and instead slowing down, being really intentional. and as a result, seeing greater results from your concentrated input, from your doing less to achieving more. So let me explain why I chose this theme this year because there were a few other contenders. I'll literally tell you what they were. I'll put up my notes up and I'll find out.

Some themes I tossed up this year were your year for working in silence, your year for simple pleasure, your year for asking. for more, your year for taking your dream seriously, all worthwhile themes, by the way, and like feel free to steal them from me, but your year for doing less and achieving more just stood above the more because I think it was kind of a combination of them all as well, but also because I think it like reflects a deeper, broader revolution we're seeing in society of people saying, I don't want to feel like I have to do everything. I don't want my only value. to be productivity. I want to be deep, not vast. Last year I was vast, not deep. I did so much, and yes, outwardly that looks like success, but I really just left the year craving, like,

devotion to something, if that makes sense, you know, to revisit 2025 for a little moment. Like, that was probably the biggest year of my life. The gratitude for it is overwhelming, but I'm going to be honest, I think, you know, it really did take a toll on me. And I really just ended the year being like, I'm exhausted and the gratitude therefore is harder. You know, I published my book, Person and Progress, which please, by the way, go and buy the book. Then I went on my book tour. I went to Australia, went to the US. I met like over a thousand of you guys, the listeners, which was like probably the biggest highlight. You guys, side note, are just so smart. Like, every time, I meet a listener of the show or like you come up to me on the street. I'm being completely

serious. Every single person I meet is like the coolest person I've ever met. Like just so smart, so wise, so interesting. So that was a big highlight. I also started the YouTube channel for the podcast. I hired the first like ongoing team members for the podcast. I ran a half marathon, which like wasn't on the bucket list. I don't know how that happened. I adopted my dog. I bought an apartment. I moved countries. Like that's a lot of stuff. And it's a lot of stuff. And it's, all really good stuff. You know, I live in London now. Like, that's, that still hasn't like fully processed for me.

And I think some things just kind of slipped through the cracks. I also started my other podcast mantra, which I guess I can kind of break the news here, like won't be returning for a second season. And that's sad to say because it was something I was really passionate about. And I really felt like it brought out a different. of me, but I was in the doing more, achieving more phase. And I think, again, some things fell through the cracks and, like, to be honest, I just didn't have time for that project and I just kind of stretched myself too thin. And I wanted to have everything that I wanted right now,

not realizing that, like, by rushing through it, there wasn't as much care and there wasn't as much, like, craft and devotion that is really important to me and is, what I give and try to give to everything. And I think that, you know, so that decision, that outcome of like not doing mantra for a second year has really contributed to this theme. You know, you may hear this laundry list of things and be like, damn, like, what a productive year, Gemma had. Like, that's a really successful year.

And it obviously was, but I'm also very exhausted. And I think I've fallen out of love with what I'm doing, which I never want to have happened. because having passion and purpose for my work is probably like one of my core values. Doing more, you know, it's sexy and it looks good and it gets results and it gets praise and it gets you pats on the back. And if you're people please you, you're a perfectionist, you're someone who always wanted academic accomplishment and achievement. Like if you're someone like me, that feels great.

But when you choose to do less and to be selective, I do believe you achieve more not in quantity but quality, which personally is what I want. Really what it comes down to, what this theme is coming down to is alignment over exhaustion, intentionality over intensity, what we do for appearances versus what we do for deep values and deep desire. The way I've been kind of thinking or imagining this approach is imagining approaching my goals like I'm a student. And to be a student, to be a goal setter, like there is,

kind of two kinds of approaches. The first is when you want to know a little bit about everything. You want to be vast and have all this knowledge. So you kind of move between this and that. And of knowledge is valuable just for knowledge's sake. But the second kind of type of student and type of goal setter looks more for depth and is basically choosing to special. right? The first, yes, you come away with a lot, but you don't have that same deepness to things. I want to treat the few selective things I choose to focus on next year, almost like a PhD. You've become an expert in your goals. You uncover deeper parts of something. And again, that word we keep coming back to devotion. You devote time and energy.

And I think that represents your love and your care and giving that to a few things, or maybe one big thing you really want to do well is, I guess, more meaningful to me at the moment. Now, obviously in classic psychology of your 20 style, is there evidence for this? Like, there has to be evidence that this philosophy and this theme actually works. Do people who do less achieve more? It sounds really counterintuitive, but honestly, the answer is absolutely yes. Some of the most successful people in the world live and work exclusively by this principle of doing less to achieve more.

Stephen King, for example, only writes for like four hours a day. Einstein, you know, he like frequently took naps on a bigger scale. Take, for example, Warren Buffet. You know, he's just casually, one of the richest people in the world. And not that wealth is like necessarily

the greatest indicator of all of life's successes, but for the sake of this, let's say it is. And the advice he gives to people is to make, a list of the top 20 things you really want to do or really want to achieve and then draw a line below number five. After that, ignore all the other items on the list until those first five have been achieved. That is how he says he has become the success that he is, doing less, achieving more. This is similar to the professor and researcher Angela Duckworth's idea of the pyramid of goals. or goal hierarchies,

whereby she recommends that people identify their pinnacle goal, something that's like become a GP, write a book, get an Olympic medal, and then ensure that their smaller goals contribute to this larger one rather than setting aside the pinnacle goal and just creating random goals and expecting the larger one to come true or focusing on a million disparate ones and then thinking that that's going to create your dream life. She basically says that when you're in alignment, your main purpose and

ambition, even if that's just for the year, you know, tends to influence all other things and make stuff happen. And she does also talk about how, you know, sometimes that can feel a little bit limiting. Like the pinnacle goal idea can feel limiting, especially when we're in our 20s. You know, there is a lot we want to do and a lot we want to achieve and we have a lot of energy for our goals. But having a specific goal at any one time, I think will help you get to the place of achieving it faster. It will also help you eliminate that goal if it's not the right one for you.

Being devoted to something really deeply really helps you figure out whether it's the thing you want to be devoted to for the rest of your life. You know, for me, having one pinnacle goal for this year, especially as a 20-something-year-old, yes, like initially it felt uncomfortable. But I also realized that, you know, the cognitive load of trying to do a million things and not being able to achieve any of them is far worse than feeling limited by a deliberate choice. I feel like last year I was more limited by. having a million choices, then I do now feeling limited by having just one or two.

Really, the success of this comes down to just a few psychological principles. Number one being cognitive load theory. You know, our minds have limited available resources. It's why you can't, you know, really multitask or more than like maybe three things at a time and having too many priorities or too many goals does the same thing and often means that you're going to do all of them worse and not really achieve any of them. And it's similar to this idea of scattered versus focused effort. Scattered effort looks busy because you're freaking running around everywhere and it feels productive

and it gives us the comforting illusion that we are on top of things because we are seemingly moving, acting, and we confuse that with being productive when a lot of it is just busy work. But cognitively, you know, it's one of the least efficient ways to work. Every time you switch between goals, tasks, context, your brain does pay a cost. It pays a tax. And that tax is called attention residue.

When you have a million goals for your year, when you're trying to do everything all the time, moving between those goals, moving between those activities, a portion of your focus will always stay stuck on the previous task, meaning you are never fully present in the next one. In contrast, focused effort comes from being selective. And again, it means we are often going to experience deeper work, deeper curiosity and deeper joy in the thing that we're doing. So that's basically my argument for this year's theme of doing less and achieving more. Not only is it more enjoyable,

it also seems to be a much more successful approach to life, even if counterintuitively doing more we would think might get us to places faster. It seems that the evidence doesn't say that. So with that being our 2026 theme, let's talk about how we are going to implement it and how it should impact your decision making and how you plan for this year ahead. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers,

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There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends, I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

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Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now.

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found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.

I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alesspian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

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and like crazy on the list just for fun, just because I'm like, yeah, let's keep the creative dreamlight juices flowing. Like last year I think I wrote, write a movie script on my goal list, which, yeah, unrealistic is probably underselling it. Like that wasn't going to happen. Last year, I actually made a goal bingo card, which was like 12 squares that I had on my fridge that I wanted to achieve. and by putting so many things on there,

like it was a fun activity, but I think I kind of acknowledged, I'm not going to do all of these. Some of them are going to get cut from the get-go. Some of them aren't going to get done. And that's counterintuitive, right? Why do you set a goal? Why set any goal you basically know you're not going to keep?

Just for the sake of setting it and thinking it may accidentally happen? It's basically signaling, I guess, to yourself and to your self-belief systems, hey, you don't really have to follow through. You don't have to follow through with some of these, so why follow through with any of them? It basically says, from the get-go, these are optional.

So instead, let's take a page from Warren Buffett's example, write down the 15 things you really ideally would want to accomplish next year, and instead of underlying five, let's underline three, two main goals, one reserve goal. One reserve goal for if you get really lucky and you accomplish those two things before the end of the year. This stops you from setting goals purely to soothe your anxiety that you're not doing enough or that you should be doing what others are doing.

It also prevents goal conflict. Too many goals compete for your attention, meaning that you can never give any of them all of it. I think it will feel uncomfortable at first because you don't have this security blanket of promises to yourself that feel like you're doing something, even though you're not. But at the end of the day, at the end of the year, I think that you'll see that this is the right choice to limit yourself now to get more in the future. Alternatively, I'm going to give you a different method.

I've suggested this method before if this one isn't the one for you. If goal setting with only one to two things per year is hard, break down your 2026 into three seasons instead. So each four months, each season, you have a separate theme or a separate goal or a separate area that you want to exclusively work towards with concentrated effort. So like season one, what is that? Like January to April, like is fitness. That is the thing, that is your theme. That is your main goal for that season. Season two, once you have that down pat, is finances. This is your four month period to like commit to deep learning, commit to learning how to invest, to learning how to budget, educating yourself. And then season three might be like, you know, it may be a specific

creative project. So if the two to three goal idea doesn't work, segmenting your year to prioritize those core things you want to achieve might be a good alternative. I think both methods work. It's just about choosing which one's going to work best for your brain. Like if you, are someone who gets bored easily, having those ongoing two to three goals going at any given time, like it's going to be more helpful because you're not going to feel bored and therefore give up. But if you're someone who can get really obsessive and into a flow state with things, I think choosing the second is preferable. You also have to be okay with saying no to things that may really excite you.

I got this opportunity this year. I don't think I've shared this, but I got this opportunity to make my own custom guided journals. and that's a really cool opportunity. It's also something I've wanted to do for a while. I have a real vision about it. But I had to really decide, is this as meaningful as the other two goals I really want to achieve? And sadly, it wasn't.

So I said no to something that I've really wanted for a long time and that was hard, but I also felt a deep sense of relief in that, like, I knew that that was the right decision for the moment. I knew that, like, turning this down might be disappointing. That doesn't mean that it's not going to come back around. doing less mean sacrifices and betting on the idea that it's worth it and knowing that you want to be able to do it well so give it the space and the time.

The second application of this theme this year I think is figuring out what tasks in your day are necessary and what things are just signaling busyness. I don't know about you but especially when I was at uni and I was at my corporate job, I spent a lot of time doing things that were just like actually useless and were just for appearances. One such thing is LinkedIn. Now, no hate to LinkedIn or my LinkedIn users, but like the amount that I really thought that mattered and that that was somehow an important thing for my career, the amount that I was like sending my boss project updates in like a perfectly curated PowerPoint presentation that she didn't need.

like I thought that mattered. The amount of time that I spent like endlessly reorganizing my to-do list instead of just doing it or like color coding my calendar, you know, yes, having pride in your work and wanting to be efficient is important. But if you want to embody our theme for the year, you've got to get bloody clear on what is actually on your to-do list, what is on your should-do list, and what is on your could-do list. I used to put everything on my to-do list as if each task was of equal importance. And they weren't.

And it made procrastinating easy for me because I could tackle the tasks that really had no penalties associated with them or weren't scary or didn't require deep work because they still felt that I was like it felt like I was doing something. And I could convince myself that I was making progress. It was just a form of like glorified procrastination. So every week, maybe every day, what you know. need to do is write down the things you absolutely need to complete today. Keep it minimal, keep it honest, what you should complete today, you know, what would make your life easier tomorrow,

what others may be waiting on you for. And if all else is done and you've got some free time and you want to work, what could you do today? What are some bonus tasks? Because not all those categories are the same thing. Our focus is on working, smarter, not harder, not fatiguing our mind, not fatiguing our cognitive resources with stuff that is not essential or important, especially if it's to give the appearance of productivity. You have to eliminate that. Also, if you're not busy, if your to-do list is done, let yourself not be busy. You don't have to optimize every waking minute of your day. And also, here's a psychological secret for you. Sometimes the best thing you can do to optimize your time is actually not use it and just enjoy it. Just rest. Just switch off.

If you take away one study from all of this, I want it to be this one. In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institute of Health Researchers mapped the brain activity that was flowing when we learnt a new skill. And they discovered that taking short breaks from the task, even taking a few days away at a time, was better for learning compared to people who just sat there and kept trying and kept trying to cram new skills into an exhausted brain. There is a restorative science to doing nothing. It's a real tortoise in the hair scenario. Conserving your energy for more important tasks and goals is the best method for success. I'm also committing myself this year to not working on holidays, to not working on my weekend evenings, if I can help it, to not succumbing to the pressure

to see rest as simply free extra unplanned time, but plan time. My rest time is, it's planned. There is something scheduled and there's something is to do nothing. Especially if you're a creative person, you know, you'll really understand how important this is in the long run. There's this amazing article from Scientific America titled Why a Rested Mind is a Creative Mind in which the author talks about how all great creatives have one thing in common. And it's not talent, it's not passion, it's time off, sabbaticals, naps, long lunches, weekend, invent. We can invent. I just like woven into the fabric of being a creative person. And I want more of that.

The final way I'm applying this philosophy this year, this theme is maybe a bit unconventional, but I'm actually not going to tell people my goals for 2026. I've been kind of mentioning that I have two big ones in this episode. Maybe there's one big goal that I've mentioned maybe offline like in Instagram or something, but I'm not going to be outwardly talking about my goals. And not even with friends. Here is why that's going to link back to my theme for the year. There is this understanding in goal psychology that telling people your goals increases your chances of doing them.

It's called public commitment. And to some extent, it works. I think they do it a lot in like AA. It works by leveraging the extrinsic motivational power of embarrassment. Basically, if I don't do this, I'll be embarrassed because people, will think something about me. They'll think something is lacking. They'll think I've failed. And that fear is meant to motivate you. By not telling people, sometimes we assume that means we aren't going to be accountable and we can kind of quit silently. But I read this interesting research the other day

that said publicly announcing your goals actually reduces motivation if the announcement creates a premature sense of identity completion before the work has actually happened. you know, doing the thing that you set out to do is obviously the number one option, but saying the thing that you plan to do is number two, because it indicates to people socially like, oh, this is part of my identity. This is like, I'm the kind of person who wants to do this. Whether I do it or not, actually doesn't matter because I've already indicated that it's a desire for me.

That says something about me and my character. And for me, what I've noticed is that when I tell people, I don't feel as good about the goal anymore, the expectations, whether people have them or not, it really doesn't matter, kind of strips the intrinsic desire from it all. It also, I've found, kind of artificially speeds up the timeline because you begin to judge your progress by appearances and how it looks outwardly rather than how it's feeling to you as the person who is living within this goal, living the steps, living the work, who can organically see progress. Others might not be able to because you are with the goal all the time you are working.

So I want to work in silence. And maybe that's the second theme of your year for working in silence, for falling in love with the process before the results, for discovering self-accountability through enjoyment, through passion and personal motivation, rather than relying on others to perhaps socially punish you or make you feel embarrassed in order to do something. So that is our theme for the year. Your year for doing less and achieving more.

I hope the way that I have explained that resonates with you. And it just gives you permission, like just to take a break and just to focus on less. Especially in our 20s, there's so much pressure. I felt it. I feel it all the time. to be like constantly doing a million different things and saying that you're doing a million different things almost like prove that you're using these years wisely. No, like having deep devotion and deep love and deep commitment to just one or two things is so much

more meaningful. It's like goal monogamy is more meaningful to me this year. So I hope it is the same for you. If you have a different theme for 2026, leave a comment below. I would love to hear it. And I'm so excited for the year to come. I feel like by now you guys will have seen a big announcement. And I, yeah, I feel like I'm going to do a whole other episode talking about it.

But I just want to take this second to say, thank you so much. And I'm so grateful. I don't think it's quite hit me yet that that is the next chapter for this podcast. That's unbelievable still. But it's just you guys. Like you guys did that. You've done it all for me. So that I'm just so grateful and I want to say a big thank you.

Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. And we will talk very, very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Care Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to,

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