New year, same you (and that’s okay!)

Rachel Erbe2025-01-28T11:05:05-07:00 Ji Mi Choi NSF I-Corps Hub: Desert and Pacific Region Director The beginning of a new year is often the time people make resolutions to start doing new things or stop doing old things. We often hear, read, and see things like New Year’s resolutions to exercise more or drink alcohol less—Dry January anyone? And at the beginning of the year, there is a proliferation of articles and lists like top ten lists—‘top ten ways to eat healthier’, or ‘top ten ways to stop procrastinating’, or ‘top five harmful habits to break’.  A concomitant part of the ‘new year, new resolutions’ narrative is failure—so much so that the second Friday in January has become known, harshly in my opinion, as “Quitter’s Day”.  Thank goodness we are past January 10th! Since failed resolutions are often attributed to setting unrealistic expectations, some resources advise us to start small: to commit to one step or one part of a larger objective to avoid becoming a quitter or getting derailed before we can even really start. In my experience supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, three commonalities I have encountered from people of all types are: 1) there’s a problem to be solved or an improvement to be made, 2) there’s a hope that someday, they’ll be the one to do that, and 3) there are pre-conditions whether it’s more money or more time for that someday to be today. The NSF I-Corps™ program is specifically designed to support that ‘someday’ being now. Through just a four-session, live online course,...