I'm Gretchen Rubin and I'm Elizabeth Kraft and this is a little happier. Gretchen, I am joining

you this week on a little happier to talk about a holiday hack. Yeah, and listen, this week our

holiday hack for the way you can make your holidays happier has to do with the new year because,

you know, we all go into the new year with sort of hopes and ambitions. So how do you make that a

reality? And so the hack for the new year to make it better than before is to really pick a one-word

theme or like a one-phrase theme that really distills what you want for the new year into this

very kind of short snappy idea so that it's easier to kind of drive forward with this really

powerful single-minded energy because I think a lot of times you might have a lot different ideas,

but when I really try to just pick one word or one phrase, it all kind of comes into a much sharper

focus. So do you have a word for this year? Yeah, now the word that I'm thinking about for this year

is definitely in the family with the words I've picked in the past. I think there's a definite

like family of things because in previous years I've picked words like upgrade and lighten up

and this year's word is repurpose because I realize I have all this material that I've created

because I'm sort of a compulsive writer and notetaker and I feel like it could turn into other

things and that would be really creative and fun and satisfying, but I never focus on it because I'm

always sort of driving ahead. So this year I want to focus on driving ahead and doing new things,

but also figuring out how I can repurpose what I've already created, but then also like in my

in other areas of my life it's like how can I make more out of what I already have? Like how can I

use up what I have? How can I put things to use? This is related to my constant desire to

spend out, which was one of my personal commandments. So I'm really focused on repurpose.

I like that. Now how about you? What have you picked in the past and do you have a thought for

this year? Well, let's see, some of my favorites of the past were free time style.

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