How to Change Your Life One Week at a Time

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For many people, change is scary. But change is inevitable. The thing we can do is to get more used to it.

Over a decade ago, I vowed to do at least one new experience every week (“one new thing a week” or ONTAW). I had some ideas for what kinds of “new” things I would do but for the majority of the times, anything new counted, whether planned or not. It could be visiting a new restaurant, trying a new recipe, visiting a new city, trying a new hobby.

Why One New Thing a Week Works

This can be too ambitious or too tame depending on how you live your life. Sometimes you get busy and can only manage to get one new thing done.

Yes, you could figure out some big dream and break it into weekly goals. That would be a way to change your life to fit one goal. But you don’t have to confine this idea to one area of your life. Another way to do it is if you have a lot of little goals or a lot of big goals.

I would also caution against using ONTAW as a clear linear progression. It’s more of an opening yourself up to serendipity. It’s not clear that everything will be successful. Your goals will likely change.

How One New Thing a Week Changes Your Life Day to Day

When you have to do something new, you’re more likely to say yes to invites. You’re more likely to pick up on activities that you thought to yourself, oh that’s something I wanted to do but I’ve never had the chance to do that. Now you do have the chance. In fact, you  have the impetus. ONTAW means you can look back on your year and see all the new things you tried. It gives a whole bunch of highlights.

Unlikely that any one thing will change your life that much. Looking back at my list of ONTAW accomplishments, there are a lot of names I no longer remember and experiences I forgot about.

Most of all, it means you can’t drift for years without trying anything new. It doesn’t have to be anything big but being open and curious.

How One New Thing a Week Changes Your Life Over Months

The clearest way that ONTAW can change your life is that you finally get around to doing something you’ve been meaning to do and it’s something you love and continue to do. This is how I started pickleball, rock climbing, sprouting my own seeds, hosting dinner parties – all the things started with just one time.

You could also try something and hate it, and then you don’t have to think about that anymore. It saves mental energy. This is how I learned that aerial silks is not for me – but I did a get a story out of it. And I have an amazing appreciation for the singer Pink.

A Few Examples of How One New Thing a Week Changed The Course of My Life

So this past week, one of my new things was that I made my first sourdough bread. I know, I’m a few years late on the trend. The reason that I wanted to do a sourdough though is a new friend offered to give me a bit of her sourdough starter. I met this friend while I was on a date. I went on that date because I met the guy at a meetup. And I went to the first meetup in 2014. I went to the meetup because I read Bowling Alone and decided to meet new people. Oh and I bought a dutch oven in 2014 and started baking bread in 2016, also as two of my new things.

So because I read a book in 2014, I made sourdough bread in 2023. Each one of these steps made sense in isolation. If I had started in 2023 having never made bread before, not knowing where to get sourdough starter, not owning any of the equipment – it wouldn’t have happened. But because I had already put all these pieces in place, it was almost inevitable.

Change Your Life One Week at a Time

There are many ways to employ ONTAW in your life. I personally started by brainstorming a list of small, medium, and large goals. I then wrote out a calendar for the new year divided by weeks (for instance, 1/1-1/6, 1/7-1/13, 1/14-1/20). Writing down the weeks of the year takes a surprising amount of time. It’s easy to forget that there are 52 weeks in a year and that’s at least 52 times you can try something new.

On that list of weeks, I write down anything new I already had planned. I write down any date-specific goals like “host a Halloween” party or “have New Year’s Eve plans” on those weeks. Then I start to write down some of the goals tentatively for the remaining weeks. These can change, of course, but it definitely gives you something to look forward to and something to plan toward. After that, every week, you have to write down what you did. Anything new counts. But if you find that you didn’t do anything new, then it lights a fire under you to try something off your life of goals. You can’t keep waiting forever to achieve your goals.

Conclusion

We are approaching the end of the year and we look back at what we’ve done. Having a ONTAW plan means you have a running list of new things you accomplish and tried and see how much of your life has changed.