Write a letter to yourself five years out. Promises feel different when you have to face the reader.

Promises made to nobody in particular are easy to drop, because nobody is waiting. Addressing a specific person changes that, even when the person is you at twenty-two, because you have to picture them reading it and working out whether you followed through. That imagined reader is surprisingly effective. Vague intentions get harder to write down once somebody is going to check them.

Write the letter this week and get specific about two or three things. Seal it, date it, put it where you will genuinely find it again. Say what you hope is true by then and what you intend to have done about it.