You’re reading the Wonder Tools newsletter. I’m Jeremy Caplan, tool fanatic & director of teaching & learning at CUNY’s Newmark Grad School of Journalism. Since April, I’ve been sharing sites, apps & other useful resources every Thursday morning. Here are 36 past issues if you’re looking for something. I’d love 💌 to hear from you — hit r to reply directly to my inbox.
Here are little things to try during your end-of-year break.
📆 1. Put some 2021 dates on your calendar
Tinymonth.com give you a single-page view of the year ahead on a single page. You can then pick dates in the weeks and months ahead and share them. It's handy for mapping out next year's book group dates, days when you'll run with a friend, post-Pandemic travel plans, or whatever else you're planning ahead for. The free service lets you share a link so someone can see all the dates you've picked, or copy the list of dates in text form to paste into an email.
🤔 2. Reflect on 2020 and 2021
Unravel your year by Susannah Conway is an excellent, free reflection guide you can use to think back on this crazy year we've just lived through. It has thoughtful prompts to guide you along. You can download it as a free PDF for in black and white or in color. It's also available in Spanish.
The Ultimate Annual Review, created by Steve Schlafman, is an alternative free template you can use as a printable PDF, a Google Doc, or a Notion page for reflecting back on this year.
As Schlafman describes it "The Ultimate Annual Review is an actionable blueprint to conduct your own self-paced annual life review. You'll explore the challenges you faced, what you learned, and what you desire in the new year." Basically it has some useful prompts for thinking back on this past year.
If you’re a fan of Cards Against Humanity —which you can download and print for free—or if you're just exhausted thinking about 2020, you can play Done with 2020, or check out the 20 phrases that defined 2020.
🔮 3. Send a note to your future self
Futureme.org lets you send yourself a free letter that will be emailed to you on a future date of your choice. Tip: in your letter, pick three reminders that your present self knows your future busy self might need and enjoy, including a value you care deeply about, a strength you sometimes forget you have, and a long-term objective you sometimes set aside. Schedule it for January 31, once New Year's resolutions have faded.
Or send a note in your journal to your younger self, as done here by Susannah Conway.
📚 4. Explore some new tiny habits
Skip New Year’s resolutions and plan little experiments instead. Research shows over and over that resolutions aren’t particularly useful. Little experiments are. Pick either Atomic Habits or Tiny Habits — each is a fantastic book for setting yourself up for 2021. The core idea in both is to focus on small, feasible, repeatable daily behaviors rather than focusing on gigantic far-off goals. A new behavior to explore from Jan 2-8 may be less sexy than a long list of resolutions, but it’s likely to more impactful.
Along these lines, Which Ritual has little daily, weekly, monthly or yearly rituals you can try for self-improvement in preparation for 2021. Little things like starting your day with a quick reflection before grabbing a device. The excellent Make Time book (by the authors of the fantastic Sprint book about testing startup ideas) has an accompanying one-page printable PDF you can use to stay on track with little experiments.
If you need a resolution, try a New Year’s First.
Thanks for reading and have a restorative break 🌤
Thank you for putting these together, will explore them all! _Cecilia Santos