My 2025 digital resolutions

My opinion on new years resolutions has always been pretty cynical (surprise!). I always thought that if you really wanted to do something, you'd already be doing it.

This year I've tried to allow a little exploration in and went through and made a list of all the things I'd like to do this year.

There are a whole bunch of the usual, uninteresting ones (read more, watch less) but I thought I'd pull out some that lean into digital life a bit more.

1. Don't keep my phone next to my bed.

Wow, this one is already paying dividends. I've started charging my phone in another room and the amount and quality of sleep I'm getting has gone way up. I still get woken up a fair bit by an 18 month old son but just adding that little bit of friction means I don't spend an hour scrolling on my phone.

2. Try and keep some consistency in blogging.

I've said I'll aim for a post a month, so we'll see. I've got a couple of drafts lying around and have been working to improve my shockingly bad posting workflow. I'm all set up with Obsidian and have symlinked my 11ty posts folder from the git repo which feels like a step in the right direction.

3. Get further off the grid

By "off the grid" I mean I want to rely less on paying monthly subscriptions to access my own music, movies, etc.

I've got my music library set up in Doppler (which I love) and manually sync albums to my phone when I get the time. Having offline access to music wherever I go has removed a major annoyance in my life, especially when stuck on the tube.

4. Continue to learn and use Neovim

Spent some time during the holiday season getting to grips with Neovim. I'm still very much on the wrong end of the learning curve at the moment but this has been a fascinating learning experience. I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is about!

5. Keep my dotfiles on github

I've gone through many phases of tracking my dotfiles on github and then just letting that repo grow stale over many years. This time I'll be different!

I've set up a tool called chezmoi to help me keep this sorted. I'm still learning the right workflow so have to return to the docs a bit more frequently than I'd like but we'll get there.

I've really got this laptop set up how I like so would be a shame to have to start totally from scratch again should something happen to it.

6. Explore and participate in some of the non-billionaire-owned social networks and apps

Have liked the look of Glass for a long time and I'm an active lurker on Mastodon and Bluesky. Also hear good things about pixelfed but I'm beginning to worry that social media was just a mistake, whether it's centralised or not.

7. Tidy up my iPhone homescreen and apps

Would be great to get this down to a single screen or two. Currently the app library is just a dumping ground for apps I download and forget about.

8. Put more things in Things

Have owned Things for a long time but still working out how it fits into my digital life alongside Obsidian, Apple Notes and Reminders. I've got a shortcut setup to pop the quick entry dialog. It's ingrained into my muscle memory, now I just need to make a habit of going back and organising things (and ticking them off).

That's it I guess? Once again I need to go through and link up a bunch of things here, but just going to publish this now so it doesn't languish in a drafts folder for months.