Happy New Year, everyone! My family and I had a great holiday break, and I hope you did, too. If you made any resolutions, here’s hoping they won’t be too hard to keep.

I’m starting off with one myself this week, right out of the gate: getting all the documents together for my taxes, for once, months before they’re due.

My motivation in 2022, after years of habitual procrastination? It doesn’t have much to do with self-improvement, or even admitting that I’m an adult who has to do adult things.

Instead, it’s mostly due to a smart communications trick that one of my best friends played for/on me—and also, as it happens, the Bible.

Here’s the story. The friend who played the trick is called Griff. We met way back at the end of our freshman year of college, and he’s really been one of my closest confidants ever since.

Also, much to my advantage, he grew up to become an accountant—and a really good one. My accountant, in fact.

One thing I’ve learned in life: Choose your friends based on character, but it’s an extra bonus if some of them grow up to become accountants, lawyers, or doctors—as opposed to say, experts in Irish literature.

(It’s rare you’ll ever need to call a friend for last-minute, middle-of-the-night professional advice on Irish literature.)

Anyway, I’m small potatoes compared to most of Griff’s other accounting clients (I think). I’m pretty sure he keeps me on out of friendship. But, there I’ve been nonetheless almost every tax year, taking a bit of advantage by getting him my stuff at the very last possible minute.

This year, however, after we filed the forms at the last minute and I paid what was due, Griff texted me:

"Just sent you something via Amazon. Do not open until we talk."

Two days later, the package arrived. I got Griff on the phone.

"OK. Open it."

Inside, I found a brand new, shrink-wrapped, straight-from-the publisher copy of the Holy Bible.

"I want you to put your phone on speaker, put your left hand on the Bible, raise your right hand, and repeat after me."

I was laughing, but I did as instructed. Griff continued:

I, Bill Murphy Jr., do solemnly swear that in 2022, I will break my streak of leaving my tax prep to the last minute, and I will instead compile and transfer all of my documents by the end of January, mid-February at the latest, so that my good friend Griff, who is not getting any younger, will not have them on his plate at the end of tax season, when time is short and his days are already long enough as it is.

Frankly, I admit, this isn’t the first time Griff has tried to encourage me to get my materials in earlier; it’s just the first time that the message actually stuck.

I mean, I’m not only doing it early this year, but I’m sharing the tale with you. And, it’s the kind of story that has brought me new insights every time I’ve told it.

For example, I wrote something about this on Inc.com in December, about the "emotional intelligence” aspects of what Griff did to make his message memorable: like creating anticipation (I wondered what he was sending me, and why) and leveraging humor (I was smiling and laughing the entire time).

More recently, I realized that Griff had treated me like a kindergartener (no offense taken, Griff). If you were here last month, you might recall we talked about five attention-getting techniques of kindergarten teachers, as complied by Elizabeth Brown at Mic:

• Creating structure.

• Keeping things short.

• Offering incentives.

• Targeting multiple senses.

• Using multiple modes of communication at once

Now, I don’t know if Griff goes to these kinds of lengths for everyone—but I suppose the twist is that we both know he probably can't really fire me as a client.

I mean, he could. And he should do it, if I were chronically late and needed habitual cajoling on other things—like paying his bill on time. (I do make sure of that.)

But, realistically he probably wouldn’t, because we're friends—and who would he hang out with at our college reunion next year?

Still, I hate to take advantage, and now that I remember, I’m going to make the extra effort and actually do what I’ve now sworn I would.

And Griff, if you ever find yourself in need of early morning professional advice on the works of George Bernard Shaw or Brendhan Behan, shoot me a text. Thanks for being a great friend.

Call for comments: I have two, really. First, do you procrastinate as much as I (normally/previously) did on getting tax documents together, or does this whole notion seem foreign to you? And second—maybe a broader, better question: What are your new year’s resolutions?

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7 other things worth your time

Gosh, how do I come back in here after nearly two weeks, and pick only 7 things?

• Flipside of tax procrastination: the IRS still has 6.3 million unprocessed individual returns and 2.3 million amended tax returns to process from last year, according to the WSJ. (WSJ, $)

• What am I going to say about COVID and Omicron? Let’s just include this odd info: 16 of the 25 workers at the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica have caught the virus—but none have serious symptoms. (BBC)

• More anecdotal proof of my theory that many people leaving their jobs are finding other non-employee ways to make money: Ex-McDonald’s employee says she quit her job and name makes up to $10,000 a month as a “food influencer” on TikTok. (NY Post)

• A New York Times reporter interviewed a Talib commander in Afghanistan recently, 11 years after he and the reporter—who was once a Marine Corps infantryman in Afghanistan—tried to kill each other. (NYT)

• A lost Asian eagle has been roaming North America for a year. (NPR)

• Japan professor creates lickable TV screen that can imitate food flavors. (ChannelNewsAsia)

• Watch a Tesla owner blow up his Model S with 66 pounds of dynamite instead of paying $22,000 to repair it. (Yahoo News)

Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Pixabay. As mentioned, I told part of this story before in a different context on Inc.com.