Notes on Process

Elizabeth Spiers
5 min readJan 19, 2022
Stock photo of “chaos”. Also, the inside of my brain.

Every year I make New Year’s Resolutions. I’d suggest it comes from a place of Pollyanna-ish confidence that THIS. YEAR. will be the year I run the marathon/finish the book/learn a language fluently/develop the physique of a professional track star, but the truth is, if I don’t pick a day–and it could be arbitrary; it doesn’t have to be New Year’s–to sit down and think about these things and what I’d like to be doing, I won’t do it at all.

Elizabeth Spiers

Writer, NYU j-school prof, political commentator, digital strategist, ex-editor in chief of The New York Observer, founding editor of Gawker