Issue #025 — Beginnings, again. With less performance this time.
A January letter with no number to hit. The practices that earned their place, and the year they will produce on their own.
Friend,
Beginnings, again. With less performance this time.
I have written a January letter every year of this newsletter. I have a small ritual of re-reading the previous ones before I write the new one, partly to keep myself honest, partly to notice what has shifted. The thing that has shifted, looking back across them, is the volume of declaration. The first January letter had goals. The second had a softer set of intentions. This one has almost nothing in it that resembles a plan, and I trust that more than the previous two.
What I have, instead of a plan, is a small set of practices I am going to keep doing because they earned their place. A quieter morning. A weekly walk without a podcast. A monthly look at the bank app. One real piece of work before noon. A book at a time. A friend I see on purpose, not by accident. I am not going to rebrand these as a system. They are just the things that work.
What I do not have, this year, is a number to hit. No revenue target. No subscriber goal. No book to finish on a deadline. This is partly a reaction to noticing how much the pursuit of the number distorts the work, and partly an experiment in trusting the practices to produce the year, instead of dragging the practices along to serve the number.
I am aware that this is the kind of post that, on certain corners of the internet, would get filed under unambitious. I am also aware that those corners are usually staffed by people whose visible output exceeds their actual happiness in ways they cannot afford to admit. So I am going to keep my own counsel.
If you are starting the year with a long plan, good luck. Some of you will execute brilliantly. If you are starting it tired, with no plan, ashamed of having no plan, I want to say plainly: that is also a way to start a year. The shape of the year is not set in January. It is set across many quiet decisions made in real time, by a body that is well rested enough to notice what each decision is actually asking.
Begin again, gently. Same as last year. Same as next year. That is the practice.
Yours,
Enova