A couple of years ago I made myself a promise. I would write down one idea a week, every week, for a year. Something small. Something I actually believed. Something that might genuinely shift how someone thinks.
Two years on, that promise has become a book. It’s called 52 Ideas to Change Your Thinking, and it’s out now.
Let me tell you what it is. And, more importantly, what it isn’t.
Why 52 weeks and not 52 chapters
Most books ask you to read them at whatever pace you can manage. Skim them on a train. Devour them on holiday. Put them down and mean to pick them up again.
I didn’t want that book. I wanted one that would actually settle into you.
Fifty-two weeks is deliberate. It’s slow. Slow enough for each idea to do its work. But not so slow that you drift. It maps onto a year, which is how a life actually measures change. Not thirty days. Not ninety. A year.
If you read this book the way you read most books, you’ll finish it in a weekend and forget most of it by Christmas. If you read it the way it’s designed to be read, one idea a week, you’ll come out the other side different in ways you can’t quite name.
Who I wrote it for
I had a specific reader in mind. Someone in the middle of life. Too many demands, not enough space to think. Someone who reads books but doesn’t always finish them. Someone who has some kind of faith, or once did, and hasn’t quite given up on the possibility that thinking might matter.
If any of that sounds like you, or like someone you love, the book will find its shape in your hands.
It’s rooted in Christian faith. That will matter to some readers and not to others. I’ve written it in a way that doesn’t require you to share my beliefs to get something out of it. But I haven’t hidden them either. God comes up. That’s the honest shape of the book.
The arc of the year
The book moves through four quarters.
- The first is Foundations of Thinking. How thought itself works. Where our beliefs come from. The assumptions we don’t know we hold. This is the ground.
- The second is Strengthening Character. The interior work of becoming more like the person you actually want to be. Not the productive version. The real one.
- The third is Deeper Connection. The people around you. Family, friends, faith, the quiet threads that hold a life together.
- The fourth is Outward Impact. The work of your hands. What you do, who you serve, and what remains when you’re done.
Each quarter builds on the last. You’ll finish stronger than you started, and you’ll know why.
A companion for the year
Alongside the book, there’s a small online companion app at 52ideas.org and it’s totally free! You can use it on your own or as part of a group reading through the year together. There’s a private reflection space for each week, a way to rate how much each idea landed, and one line at the end of each week to carry with you.
You don’t need it to read the book. The book stands on its own. It’s simply there if you want it.
This could be your year
The book is out now at shop.ianmayer.org or via Amazon – read a page and see if it lands. If it does, read it the way it was written. One idea a week isn’t much. Fifty-two of them, given a year, is more than you’ll expect.