The Year of Diff

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Ephesians 5:15–17

“The days are evil” – what a powerful phrase. If we consider how evil operates, I think this concept gains a rich and relatable meaning.

We’re told in the Bible that the forces of evil are not a uniformed army, lined up across a predetermined battlefield from the forces of good. It does not fight honorably or agree to any rules. Rather, it’s tied time and time again to deception, starting from its first strike: the fall. The snake did not bargain, debate, fight, or force Eve to eat the fruit – the snake deceived her.

Evil no doubt has many different facets, but I think we can all relate to the idea that time is deceptive. How many of us have looked up and wondered where the time went? How it’s already lunch or evening? How we missed the seasonal change and are now putting up a Christmas tree in mid-December? Perhaps I’m too young for this one still, but I’ve heard it’s common later in life to wonder where entire years went.

In the effort of being intentional with my time, I’m getting on board with the idea of a yearly theme. I’d encourage you to do the same, and you can feel free to borrow my theme, or you can pick your own, even if you don’t start on January first. The evilness of the days aren’t constrained by the calendar year, and nor should you be.

And to be clear, this isn’t a resolution or a concrete goal. Inventing such a measure of success is asking for trouble when your conditions change, or when you fall short – I think most people associate resolutions with the shame of past years’ failures. While those make for great jokes about Leviticus and the month of February, every small failure accrues into a huge wall of shame and back payments of effort. (I personally detest daily streaks for this reason – one bad day sends you back to square one.)

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What Is a Yearly Theme?

I’m borrowing this concept from CGP Grey, a well-known YouTube creator. There’s a website that explains the system in detail, though I’m not committing to the whole system personally (or buying the journal for that matter).

In my own words, a yearly theme is a tool to focus your energy and attention on being better, without the rigidity of resolutions. Resolutions in particular can be a breeding ground for toxic behaviors – on the one hand, some people get legalistic about them or take pride in accomplishing their goals; on the other, it’s very easy for a single failure to snowball into a year wasted after February. We’ve all heard jokes about January being the busiest gym season and the February slog through Leviticus being the graveyard of uncounted Bible-in-a-year plans.

Instead, a theme is simply a direction to point yourself in for the upcoming twelve months. It’s a channeling device, not quite a north star for your life, but a more specific area to focus on. There are no goals to fail, because the point of a theme isn’t the effort you put into it, but rather the fruit it bears.

As an example, I recently mentioned 2023 was the year of rest, or sabbath, or the weekend, or work-life-balance for more people than I can count – including CGP Grey and his podcast co-host Myke Hurley. The goal of such a theme isn’t to take the weekend off or to not do any work after six, the goal is to establish firm boundaries and live an overall more well-rounded and well-rested life.

My Theme

When thinking about what I wanted my theme to be this year, there was one specific thing that’s been on my mind for a while. Next week, I’ll have a job for the first time in fourteen months, and God has used that time to shape and mold me in many ways, teaching me lesson after lesson. (I think the overall effect of those lessons may have been more awareness of my dross than purification of it, but I digress.) None of these came as breakthroughs with prophetic vision or drama, but simply gentle realizations of where God had taken my heart. Only now can I look back and see how the path leads to that destination.

Reading the passage of Ephesians 5 in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry mixed a couple metaphors for me in a useful way: much as the tongue is a rudder in James 3, every day is a rudder for the way you live, and its product is your life.

This idea of incremental change and daily disciplines was the one God put on my heart to consider, and for my own purposes – conciseness, repeatability, probably some desire to make it “cool” – I wanted to distill it down to something short. And, being a punk, I really like the idea of something dynamic to challenge me from getting complacent. So I considered a few words:

• Trajectory: Consideration for the direction you’re moving in.
• Direction: As a verb, “instruction”, or as a noun, “course” or “heading”.
• Rudder: A reference directly to my previous thoughts on Ephesians 5 and James 3.
• Delta: A mathematical term that describes a difference, often between two states or values that are separated by a vanishingly thin distance.
• Diff: A term from the software world, short for “difference”, a detailed view of the changes between two versions of a file or project.
• Walk/Step/Path: This entry is less concrete in my mind, but is intended to be a reference to passages about walking with God, running a race, and so on.

I think any of these could be good, but for my personal use, I like “diff”. It’s a technical term, but versatile, and one I grok. With an example from one of my projects, you can see how it compares two versions of something I wrote; the line in red is the old version of what I wrote, replaced by the line in green.

A diff is often used to describe one small set of related changes, made between two otherwise identical versions of software. Those familiar also know it can include new parts, but can also remove things that are no longer needed or even harmful – an important consideration in life. It can show many identical changes throughout many parts of the projects, such as changing a single value that shows up in multiple places, or it can even show one single change that activates new features.

However, a diff can also be between much more distantly related versions of the software. In a larger scope, it can show the changes made to add a new feature or fix a bug. It can also show the changes made between distant versions, showing all the features, bug fixes, and new bugs accrued over weeks or months.

Application

I want to keep this variety in mind throughout the year. In my daily walk, I want my mantra to remind me that changes are built incrementally – “atomic” is the industry term. I want to remember that a blog post is built out of an hour of writing at a time, that a book is finished a page at a time, and that my faith walk grows a prayer at a time.

But I also want to remember a platform is built a blog post at a time, a prolific reader is built one book at a time, and so on. Extrapolating out, the very course of the world and the coming of the Kingdom is influenced by every act of our day-to-day lives. For this larger scope, I have a habit-tracking app on my phone. I’m not quite sure how it calculates how “formed” a habit is, but I can’t argue with the fact that the habits I mentioned above – writing, reading, and prayer – are all under the halfway mark.

These are the kinds of areas where I think a theme is perfect – I don’t want to read more to read more, I want to read more to be in more regular conversation with concepts and thinking that’s not my own. I want to pray more not just to pray more, but to have a richer and more regular relationship with the Father. And in the Year of Diff, I’ll be constantly reminding myself my prayer life won’t be made perfect overnight, but through a daily walk that starts today.

I want to apply this theme to some other areas of my life too. I want to be fit, so I can help in a moving party for example. I also enjoyed the alertness that a regular morning workout gave me. I’ve also got a few professional areas I want to grow in, relating to programming and professional development, as well as developing my leadership skills.

Ideal Outcomes

To enumerate some specific examples, following the pattern of the official system, I’ve jotted down some ideas off the top of my head. Ideally, in a year’s time, I will:

• Have a backlog of posts for Life in Tension to avoid the pressure of short turn-arounds.
• Shrink my reading list, reading more books than I’m gifted without sacrificing my engagement or critical thought to each title.
• Have a rhythm of prayer that allows me to easily take in and cover prayer requests quickly and within the rhythm.
• Be able to join a moving party and contribute reliably.
• Be noticeably more alert during the day.
• Be a recognized contributor in at least one open source project.
• Find a path to professional growth and set some specific goals.
• Start being a recognized leader on my team.

An Invitation

As someone who uses the term “diff” professionally and understands it somewhat intuitively, I think it makes a good term for me specifically to keep me pointed in the right direction. The concepts of small incremental changes, as well as the big picture they accrue to, are held together nicely. If you’re also the kind of person who knows the term, you’re welcome to join me in using it.

You’re also welcome to take any of the other words I listed, or to pick your own. I’ll also invite you again to pick a different yearly theme, even if you don’t start it for a while. The race we run, like any other, is run one step at a time – make the next step a right one.

Here’s to 2024. A new year, new opportunities and tests, and more time to grow in faith.