From thought to theme
Brainstorming yearly theme names
Programmer’s log. Epoch time 1707096641. We are in the middle of another Bay Area storm tonight. This is a particularly nasty one due to rapid cyclogenesis causing high speed winds. Driving around town this morning, I definitely saw a greater-than-usual number of broken tree branches all over the roads. Several of my friends have already lost power, though we seem to be safe from an outage so far. The worst of it should be over by tomorrow morning…
Happy Sunday! I can’t believe it’s February already. I hope you all had a wonderful January and great start to the new year.
This newsletter is a double feature—below I include not just one, but two recaps of posts that I’ve written over the last two months. The first is a record of all the books that I have previously chosen every year for my holiday book gifting tradition. I thought it would be nice to keep a public ongoing list to reference.
The second is the newest post I just pushed to the blog, which describes my preferred approach to setting intentions for the new year. My husband and I do yearly themes rather than new year’s resolutions, and I find themes much more flexible, adaptable, and inspirational than resolutions. Sometimes it can be really hard to choose a single word or phrase to capture all your aspirations for the year. But this past go-around, I think we hit on a really great way to brainstorm the perfect theme name (spoiler: using ChatGPT as a partner!) so I share our most recent process and prompts for coming up with a yearly theme.
An ongoing list of great books
My holiday book picks over the years
Every year, I choose the best books I’ve read and send a copy to loved ones to support my favorite authors and bookstores. It’s a really fun annual gift-giving tradition. You can read more about what’s involved here.
This is a list of the books I’ve recommended since starting the tradition. Check out the detailed reviews below!
2023: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (review)
2022: Blood, Sweat, and Chrome: The Wild & True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan (review)
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(Click here to read more)
From thought to theme
Brainstorming yearly theme names
At the start of each year, my husband and I each pick a “yearly theme” instead of new year’s resolutions. The yearly theme acts as a guiding principle to help direct our energy, activities, and decisions throughout the year.
The original inspiration for choosing a yearly theme game from The Cortex podcast. As CGP Grey and Myke Hurley emphasize every year, themes are a gentler and more adaptable way of improving your life than resolutions, which typically encourage a pass-fail only mindset. Themes can evolve as life circumstances and priorities change. A theme like “Year of Health” can help remind the theme-setter to skew towards the healthier choice, from waking up early to go for a run to skipping a cookie impulse buy.
However, naming things is really hard. If you are anything like me, I start with a long list of aspirations for the upcoming year but then have trouble distilling it down into a simple word or phrase. Since this will be my focus for an entire year, I want it to be a good name. As CGP Grey says in his video explainer Your Theme,
Themes should be broad, directional, and most importantly: resonant.
While stuck agonizing over a name for my 2024 theme, I discovered that ChatGPT is an excellent brainstorm partner. Here I share the prompts that we used to generate the words, mission statement, and images that represent our yearly themes. A few friends have already tested the prompts out and reported back good results. This will also be a useful reference for me for future years!
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(Click here to read more)
📖 Links and books
As usual, we’ll wrap up this newsletter with some great links:
What’s that touchscreen in my room? (via Hacker News)
The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong (Scientific American)
What Does Intellectual Humility Look Like? (Greater Good Magazine)
I’m currently reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (who shockingly just got snubbed by the Hugo Awards for her most recent book, Babel) and Marathon by Hal Higdon in preparation for running my first full marathon this summer.
That’s all for now! See you later, alligator 🐊
What a thought provoking and inspirational post, Viv! I loved your metaphorical use of the Leitmotifs. Recurring musical phrases connecting the score to a story's narrative. An interesting extension of that came to mind. What role might harmony play? What would it add to the narrative? As for your list of possible thematic summaries, I really like 'Flourish.' If one is flourishing in life and love, she has every reason to be happy, healthy, energetic, creative, mindful and at peace. It lends itself to all the things I would want my year to encompass. Your post helped bring me to thoughts that will enrich the year that waits for me around the next several bends in the road. Thank you.