The real reason I kept saying "next year." And no, it was not that I was too busy.

I gave the hospital 31 years and gave myself almost nothing. What I changed after 31 years of saying next year was not a planner or an app. It was where I put the promise, and who could hear me make it. Here is exactly how it works, and why psychologists say it makes sense.

Susan Merrick · Nurse, 31 Years & Contributor
Updated July 2026 · 8 min read

After 31 years on the floor, I still pull my scrubs on every shift.

I sat in my car in the hospital parking garage and could not make myself drive home. I had just read a payroll notice on my phone. 68 hours of my own paid leave had expired that year. Not used. Not cashed. Gone, because I never filed the form.

I had 412 hours banked in that system, a whole life of days I earned and handed back. For 35 minutes I was not a nurse or a mother or a woman with a flight itinerary on her refrigerator. I was just a person who says next year.

A little over 200 days later I filled in the second eye of a small blue doll, handed in a retirement date I chose myself, and booked the trip I had postponed since 1998. What changed was not willpower.

The thief who empties the room one thing at a time

I was not lazy, and not selfish for wanting the thing I kept putting off. Lazy people are at peace. I was at war with a calendar. It goes like a thief who takes one small thing a night: you never catch him, you just notice the room is emptier.

It is smaller than people expect. That turns out to matter.

First he took my vacations. 9 of them. Booked, paid, bag-packed, handed back because someone called out and nobody else would cover the floor. The longest I had been away from that building in 31 years was 9 days, and 4 of those were my mother’s funeral.

Then he took the trip. My sister and I planned Ghana in 1998, a flight to Accra printed on a sheet of paper. I postponed it for a charge-nurse promotion. That printout has moved apartments with me twice. It is on my refrigerator right now, faded to almost nothing.

Then he came for the person who loved me. My daughter is 34. She calls every Sunday, and for years the call ended the same way, gently: Mom, when. I was 59 and still asking permission for a Tuesday off. Not because I could not leave. Because I could not choose to.

The tradition it comes from is about four hundred years old.

I did not fail for lack of tools. I failed with a full toolbox.

Here is the graveyard. 2 Franklin planners, one bought in 1997 and one in 2011, as if the problem had been the year. A retirement countdown app I deleted after 11 days. A vision board thrown out unread. A weekend planning course in 2019 with a worksheet I never filled in. 3 January journals, 4 pages each.

What a 10-year-old explained to me on a comfort-care hall

Room 4114. A boy, maybe 10, had spread a school project about Japanese folk objects across the tray table while his grandfather slept. He explained one of them to me. You pick one goal, he said. You fill in one eye. The other eye stays empty until you finish.

I said, that’s nice, honey, and went to the next room. I bought nothing that day, and I did not believe a word of it.

3 weeks later that grandfather died on my shift. I went home at 7:40 in the morning and sat on the edge of my bed with my shoes still on, thinking about a man who had a list and ran out of days. I looked the doll up on my phone, then closed it. At 2 in the afternoon, when I could not sleep, I looked again.

One eye, one goal, and I painted the first under my kitchen lamp.

The mind will not let go of a thing left unfinished

I have spent my life around evidence, so I looked for a reason it could work before spending anything. In 1927, a psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik found that the mind holds unfinished tasks far more tightly than finished ones. An open loop creates a low, constant tension that drags attention back.

My goal lived only in my head, where it had no weight and no face. My brain treated it as optional, because there was nothing to see and no one looking back.

Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University found that people who wrote goals down by hand were about 42% more likely to reach them. Not because writing is magic, but because a promise in physical form stops being a thought you can drop.

It sits by my badge and glasses, so I see it every morning.

The method a tired person can still do at the end of a shift

The doll is called a Daruma. I call the method the One-Eye Vow. Rooted in a Japanese tradition that began about 400 years ago, and in 4 centuries the rule has not changed. There are 3 parts, and only the 3 together work.

One. You choose one goal, out loud. Not “sort out the rest of my life.” One. A written list dissolves into 11 goals in two weeks. This cannot, because there is one doll and one blank face.

2. You fill in the first eye. That is your promise, made physical. A signature, not a wish. The Zeigarnik open loop, except now you can see it sitting there.

3. You put it where you cannot not see it. The second eye stays blank until the goal is finished, and not one day before.

214 days, told honestly, including the part I am ashamed of

I chose blue. Peace. Not because peace sounds soft, but because after 31 years I did not want more of anything. I wanted to stop. One goal, in the handwriting I use on charts: pick my retirement date myself, and book Ghana.

Both eyes filled in at last, holding it right there in my kitchen.

Day 3. Rinsing a mug at 7:30 in the evening, I caught the one-eyed silhouette down the hall and finally asked what was stopping me. I wrote it on an envelope. Money. Insurance. And not knowing who I am when I am not needed. The third was the real one.

Day 9. I walked past the bookshelf 2 days running without seeing it, so I moved the doll to the windowsill above the kitchen sink, where I stand at 6:30 in the morning and 7:30 at night.

Day 11. Called HR about my pension. From the parking lot, before my shift, instead of after. That is the entire trick, and I learned it only once the promise sat in front of me.

Day 23. I told my charge nurse I would not be covering the Fourth. First time in my life. My hands were sweating like a new grad’s. That night I looked at the doll, one eye filled, one blank, and cried for reasons I could not name.

The day the second eye went in.

Day 51. This is the part I am ashamed of. A colleague of 22 years had a stroke. The unit was down 2 people. And I canceled my own week off. Myself. Nobody asked me to.

That night I held the doll over the open junk drawer, because I could not stand a thing on my counter that knew what I had done. I could not make my hand drop it in. One eye, looking up at me. So I set it back facing the window.

Day 57. My daughter reached across the sink for the dish soap and turned it back around without a word. Then she said, Mom, this is the tenth one. The tenth canceled vacation. She had been counting too. I left it facing the room.

Day 68. Second HR meeting, a real number on a real page. I could go at 61, not 65, which I had assumed for a decade. Day 96. Rebooked the week, and told 2 people so I could not quietly undo it.

The full ceramic set, 5 colors, each with its own meaning.

Day 178. Started training the newer nurse on the things only I know about that unit. Not a goodbye. A handover. The third fear, the real one, finally had its answer.

Day 214. A retirement date, in writing, chosen by me, 14 months out. A flight to Accra with my sister, booked, non-refundable on purpose. I filled in the second eye with the same specimen-label marker. 4 seconds. Earned over 214 days.

Nothing on that windowsill called HR or booked a non-refundable flight. I did that, at 59. All the doll did was hold one goal instead of 7, and refuse to sit somewhere I was not looking. The 1998 itinerary is taped inside my suitcase now.

It is only a doll. How can that do anything?

It is not magic, and it did not do the work for me. It is one object with an unfinished face, sitting where it cannot be avoided, tied to one promise said out loud. It held because it was small enough for my worst day and impossible to ignore on my laziest one.

So why had I never heard of this?

Not a conspiracy, just arithmetic. There is no subscription inside a ceramic doll. That industry earns when people start over every January, buy the new app, and quit by February. A thing bought once, that cannot be upsold, is good only for the person who bought it.

What it actually costs, next to what “next year” already cost me

Most versions online are thin novelty keychains, nothing you would trust with a real promise. The one I point people to is the 5-piece ceramic set from Daruma Ritual. Each color carries its own meaning, so you match the doll to the promise.

Five colors, five intentions. You pick the one that matches the promise.

Before you look at the price, look at what not-finishing already charged me: 2 Franklin planners bought 14 years apart, a course, an app, a vision board. None of it ever held me.

It holds 5 promises over a lifetime instead of one month of good intentions. One goal at a time, and the second eye cannot be deleted, closed, or tapped done.

The gift box it arrives in, with the ritual legend inside the lid.

2 versions of the next 200 days

In one, the itinerary stays on the refrigerator, faded. Next year gets said again on the Sunday phone call, the way it was said last year, and the year before. The leave expires unfiled. A year on nothing has moved, and the wish is that it had started today.

In the other, one small thing sits in the eyeline with an unfinished face. Every time I looked up, it asked me the same quiet question. Some days I answered it badly. I turned it to the wall. Someone who loves me turned it back. And one day I got to answer it with the second eye.

There is a 30-day guarantee, so the only real risk is the first version: another year that looks exactly like the last one. I wasn't waiting for a sign. I was waiting for permission, from myself, and I finally gave it the day I put the promise where I could not look away from it. Pick your goal. Fill in the first eye. Then earn the second one.

Common questions

The honest guarantee

Nobody has heard of this brand, and it is real money for a small ceramic object that cannot be held first. That is a fair thing to hesitate over. So here is how the risk comes off the buyer.

Order the set. Choose one goal. Paint the first eye. If within 30 days the ritual is not the right fit, email for a full refund. No hoops. The only way it costs anything is the way my last 31 years already did: by changing nothing.

Exactly what you get

5 glazed ceramic Daruma in white, red, black, yellow and blue, each color with its own meaning. A premium gift box. A legend card that explains the 400-year-old Japanese ritual it comes from. It ships worldwide with tracking, and checkout is secure. That is the whole thing. No subscription, no app, no upsell, nothing to cancel.

If there is one thing you keep pushing to next year, one promise you keep handing back so someone else can have their day, this is the most honest tool I have found for it. It will not choose the date for you. It just makes sure you keep showing up to the one thing.

P.S. Nobody made me do this. That is the hard part, and it is also the whole point. Most people already know which goal it is. Mine had just never been put somewhere it could look back at me. Mine started with one blue doll on a windowsill and 4 seconds with a marker.