In 2023, I’m going deep.

To be more specific, I’m going to have a “depth year”.

Raptitude blogger David Cain originally coined this term in his post, Go Deeper, Not Wider. It unexpectedly sparked a “world-wide movement”.

The mechanics or rules of the Depth Year is simple. For one year, don’t acquire new hobbies, skills, books, clothes etc. Instead, look around your house and in your life, see what you have, and “go deep” by exploring them further instead.

Build on existing projects. Heck, complete them. That long-abandoned online course you purchased? Go finish it. That fantasy series yellowing in your bookshelves? Read them! Those unfinished short stories? Complete and publish them!

“Drill down for value and enrichment instead of fanning out. You turn to the wealth of options already in your house, literally and figuratively.” — David Cain

We tend to start new projects and never complete them. This leaves us feeling bad, said David.

And it does. I confess, I often wake up in the morning with anxiety, thinking about the loose threads fluttering in my life, telling myself I’ll “get to it” but get promptly distracted by the next Shiny New Thing in my life.

So this year I’m going to tie as many of them as I can. I want to wake up to hope rather than anxiety. I want to say, “This year, I compelted things.”

“By taking a whole year to go deeper instead of wider, you end up with a rich but carefully curated collection of personal interests, rather than the hoard of mostly-dormant infatuations that happens so easily in post-industrial society” — David Cain

That’s great, you say, but does it work?

Fortunately, David returned a year later and in his post, he explained Why the Depth Year Was My Best. Not only did he reap expected benefits such as completing abandoned projects and read long-igored books, he found many psychological benefits from going deep. For example, he:

• Understood or gained epiphanies on why he stopped them
• Experienced several other epiphanies
• Untangled several personal issues

A depth year could mean different things for different people. It’s a mindset, says David.

For me, a Depth Year translates into “tying up loose ends”. Finally putting to rest that voice in the morning lamenting about lost opportunities.

I have online courses I’ve bought sitting in the cloud, untouched and unwatched. I’ve spent thousands on them but … have not completed them.

My beautiful apartment has patches that are incomplete. My living room has no couch because I couldn’t decide on what to get after disposing of the day bed that gave me lower back and hip pain, my back balcony’s floors are begging to be spruced up, my broken guest bed is literally standing on its side, waiting to be fixed!

Most of all, I have far too many writing projects uncompleted. It’s time to dust off my unfinished novels and short stories and put it out into the world. Perhaps 2023 is the year I hold a physical book in my hands.

Rather than move on with new shiny things in 2023 I’m tying up loose ends.

Latest Newsletter: My 2023 Depth Year framework

I write about how I’m going to go about my Depth Year in my latest newsletter.

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