Frankly, this doesn’t look good
We’re well into the year (I know! Don’t panic!), and it’s a perfect moment to take a beat and look at all those things you had planned to do in 2026.
That photo is from three weeks ago, when I was sketching out the commitments I’d confidently and airily made for what I could do in the coming twelve months.
That’s the face of realization that I had, once again, conned myself into thinking I could bend time and space and do an impossible amount of work.
A big part of me was thinking, OK … it’s time to cut and run.
I need to de-promise a bunch of things. In other words, my instinct was to tackle the problem at the exact level it existed.
The doing is too much, so deal with how much you’re doing.
That’s not a terrible idea, but it’s not the only one.
What was more helpful as a first step, this time, was to ask a bigger question:
What brings out my best?
I’ve been thinking about this for about forty years.
I’ve also been forgetting what I’ve figured out about it for forty years. It’s one of those goldfish insights, one where you have to keep remembering what you’ve already learned a hundred times over.
That’s why one of my two words of 2026 is “skipping.” (If you’re a keen reader, you’ll know from a couple of weeks ago that the other is “hand-in-hand.”)
When I was three or four, legend has it that I’d go up to strangers in supermarkets (much to my mum’s surprise and confusion) and announce:
“Hello. My name is Michael. I can hop. Do you want to see me hop?”
If you consider that skipping is just a twist on hopping, it seems not much has changed in over fifty years.
For me, if I’m skipping, I’m somewhere close to being my best. It’s a little awkward, it’s almost dancing …
I’m moving forward, I’m treading lightly, I’m having fun.
Mostly here, I’m speaking as a metaphor, of course.
I’ve literally tried skipping hand-in-hand with Marcella on the street, and she’s just not that keen on it … I don’t know why. (I definitely do know why. 😆)
But if I look at what I’ve got sketched in for 2026, and think … if I was skipping my way through these … then more seems possible.
“More” still might not be the right answer.
But creating the context for being at your best sets the stage for doing the work you want to do.
And that’s what I’m skipping towards this year.
