January Changes the Calendar. September Changes the Rhythm.
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - Return to Rhythm
- Reboot - Rebuild the Habit
- One Action - Reset One Thing
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Return to Rhythm
At the end of August, Lisa and I were talking with our sister-in-law, Kristina about an idea that I had heard before, but never given it as much thought as I am now.
September can feel more like the beginning of a new year than January does. This year, I feel it.
This may have been the busiest and one of the most amazing summers I have experienced. Baseball travel, cottage weekends, entertaining and family events filled the season.
Best of all was the time spent with friends and family, including incredible bonding moments with Tyler as he matures into a remarkable young man.
I wouldn’t trade any of it.
But even good things can knock us out of rhythm. After a summer that full, I have never felt more ready, or more in need, of a reset.
August went by in a flash. Labour Day has come and gone. Tyler has started school. Fall baseball and the new hockey season have already kicked off.
For us up here in the North, cottage and boating season is essentially over. The evenings are getting cooler, work schedules are filling up and we are entering one of the busiest and most critical stretches of the year for business.
Back to the rhythm. Back to work.
January 1 changes the number on the calendar. September changes the rhythm of our lives.
Even for those who don’t have children in school, September still feels like a beginning. School returns, sports schedules turn over, vacations taper off and summer gives way to something more structured again.
There is some psychology behind that feeling. Researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis call it the fresh start effect. They found that people became more likely to pursue aspirational goals following meaningful landmarks such as the beginning of a week, month, year or academic semester, as well as birthdays and holidays.
These landmarks draw a line in our minds. Missed workouts, delayed projects and abandoned intentions belong to an earlier period, while the new one feels like a chance to change our behaviour and reconsider the bigger picture.
The research doesn’t prove that September is better than January for getting a fresh start.
But September does offer a practical advantage. Many of our routines are already changing. We can use the transitions already taking place to decide what the next version of our routine should contain.
At work, we don’t ignore how results compare with the plan and wait until January to look again. We review performance, update the forecast and decide where our resources can still make the greatest difference. This is the time for an early Q3 review and to set the stage for a big Q4.
Our personal goals deserve the same kind of intra-year review.
- What did you hope to accomplish this year and where are you at?
- What’s working, what’s not?
- What no longer matters as much as it did in January?
- What would still make a meaningful difference if you gave it focused attention now?
There’s plenty of time remaining in this year to make real progress.
Finishing strong doesn’t mean rescuing every neglected goal. Circumstances and priorities change. There’s no value in recommitting to something that is no longer important simply because you wrote it down earlier in the year.
Choose what still deserves your attention. Adjust the target if necessary. Restore one routine that summer disrupted. Take the first step on something you still haven’t started.
A reset doesn’t erase the first eight months. It uses them as information.
January may be the official beginning of a new year. September is another chance to decide how this year will end.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Rebuild the Habit
Don’t wait until January to make another set of resolutions that you start, stumble over and eventually abandon.
If you haven’t reached the health and fitness goals you set this year, September is a good time to begin again.
Maybe you fell completely off course. Maybe your effort has been more sporadic than you wanted.
You don’t have to make up for every imperfect day. You only have to make the next choice.
One of my annual health goals is simple, if not easy: I want to beat last year’s health.
Every November, I complete a comprehensive medical examination and health assessment. As part of that assessment, I look at blood markers and other diagnostic results, along with flexibility, balance, strength and body composition tests.
I try to improve what I reasonably can, move the trend in the right direction or, at minimum, maintain what I have.
That becomes harder with age, but difficulty is not a reason to relax our standards.
I know I won’t be able to improve forever across every measure, short of a breakthrough that lets us live to 200 or reverse the aging process. Until then, I will keep working because my effort is the part I can control.
I know from conversations with some readers that you began the year with ambitious physical goals and have fallen off course.
I want you to understand this: That is 100% okay.
What’s not okay is using that as an excuse to not start again today.
The starting point can be small.
I have written before about creating a personal exercise floor. A minimum so manageable that it removes the excuses to do nothing.
The simple version is:
- 10 bodyweight squats
- 10 push-ups
- 10 sit-ups
- 10 inverted rows, when I have access to the right setup
Each exercise can be adjusted to your current ability. A squat might be standing up from a chair, a push-up could be against a wall or counter, and a sit-up might be a small, controlled crunch.
The floor is not the destination. Its job is to preserve the habit of showing up.
It may seem trivial, but it adds up.
As an example, over the past 365 days, I logged 7,745 push-ups or pressing repetitions across my daily minimum and regular workouts.
Some days I stopped at the floor. Often I did many more.
Have I missed a day? Of course. Life happens. But I have not missed two in a row.
That is my rule: never miss twice.
Once you begin, you can do another round, add a walk or rebuild a more complete strength training routine.
Even on days when you do nothing more, you have kept one small promise and made the next session easier to begin.
That’s the power of consistency and compounding.
Start with what you can do today and build from there.
One Action
Reset One Thing
Set aside 20 minutes this week for a year-to-date review and Q4 reset.
- What has gone well, and what has drifted?
- What one outcome would still make this year meaningfully better?
- What action, repeated consistently, would make that outcome more likely?
Define the smallest version of that action you can complete, even on a difficult day, and put it on your calendar.
Start, or restart, the one thing that matters most.
Inspirational Quote
“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? … I never make the same mistake twice.”
— L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Readers Corner
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Until next week,
Kevin
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