New Year’s reSolutions: Making the Jelly Beans Count

Flipboard GC Cecily Mak explains how she intends to “zoom out” and see the bigger picture in the year ahead

By Cecily Mak

I am a full-time working parent of two young sons with an active social life and an inspiring and fulfilling role with a fantastic company and team. I teach one law school class a year, contribute to my children’s school activities and communities, while also investing in several recreational and professional interests.

It is not a perfect existence, but it is a very rich one that I have created with a combination of good luck and hard work. Sometimes I wonder if it is too rich, as my days are packed with activity, with little opportunity to pause, reflect and redirect. It takes discipline to slow down and take stock—to make sure I am not blindly moving on a hamster wheel as the days, weeks and months whiz by.

In early 2014, I saw a short video on the scarcity of discretionary time in a life: “The Time You Have (In Jelly Beans).” The creator put 28,835 jelly beans on a blank surface—a number roughly equivalent to the number of days in an average human life. He then proceeded to remove them in groups corresponding to the total number of days spent in childhood, sleeping, commuting, working, grooming and other activities over which we have little control, time-wise.

Toward the end of the video, the viewer is left with a relatively small number of jelly beans corresponding to a number of “days” left in life to do with as we wish. We are reminded to spend this time consciously, on things and with people we love, on activities that contribute something meaningful to the world we’ll leave behind when we are gone. Having lost my mother and other loved ones too young in recent years, coupled with turning 40 in 2014, this reminder has hit home for me on multiple levels.

In my own life, I start each day with some quiet intention setting. This is usually five to 10 minutes preparing coffee, getting dressed or driving to work when I map out priorities, parsing out the important from the urgent for the day. What does a successful day look like at the end? What do I want to spend any free time on? Who do I want or need to connect with? Will I read a story to my kids before they go to sleep tonight?

What am I going to do with this jelly bean?

In the new year, I will take this daily exercise up a level. I will “zoom out” and strive to set intentions on a longer timeline. Instead of attempting (with varying degrees of success) to map out one crazy-paced jelly bean at a time, I’ll end 2015 with a clearer set of intentions and priorities for the next five to seven years—possibly even beyond. This will require more time periodically throughout the year and probably quite a bit of note-taking, but my hope is that I’ll conclude the year with a map to achieve a handful of defined, longstanding dreams and goals.

In sharing my plan to do more long-term planning with an ambitious and entrepreneurial friend, he reminded me that with a broader timeline, just about anything is possible. You can’t write a book, launch a company, develop a course or establish a new hobby or residence without a fair amount of forethought and planning. The limitlessness of the possibilities makes this resolution both challenging and infinitely exciting. My hope is that someday I’ll look back without regrets regarding any of my few remaining jelly beans.

Cecily Mak is General Counsel for Flipboard. She was featured in Issue No. 14 of Forefront magazine.