How to be bad, better

We have the Babylonians to blame for making the new year a festival of Self-flagellation – although their resolutions were more about appeasing gods than weight loss or cutting back on booze. (Sensibly, they did their rituals in spring, not the meteorological hellscape that is a British January.) John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, rekindled the idea in 1740, with an annual new year’s service of resolution – his included a promise never to laugh, which might explain why we also choose punishment over joy.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. What if, instead of being motivated by guilt and shame, we leverage our worst habits to serve us better. By being intelligently, purposefully lazier; less mindful, disorganised, slower (and with a bit of self-compassion), we might actually be more successful, productive and happier – but on our own terms. Here’s how.

Be brilliantly lazy

Kendra Adachi, a podcast host and the author of The Lazy Genius Way, is a productivity expert who isn’t necessarily into making people more productive. Instead, she’s interested in helping us figure out exactly which things in our lives matter to us (rather than to anyone else), how to do them well, and then being lazy (although intelligently so) about all the others – whether that’s laundry, morning routines or cooking (her next book is The Lazy Genius Kitchen).

We should organise our lives in ways that reflect what’s genuinely important to us, she says – rather than to our parents, colleagues friends or neighbours – and let other, often very visible things go, even when that’s socially uncomfortable. For example, for Adachi, it was accepting that she wouldn’t be the kind of mother who volunteered in her young children’s school, but could be the kind who donated money and materials; and realising that was just as valid

Learn to love negative emotions

When your cat dies and someone breezily says, “Never mind, you