I couldn’t help but release a small Scrooge-like sweary in the supermarket this weekend. Christmas Mince Pies or German style Stollen, anyone? In September?
But then I realised… As of today, there are only 101 days left in the year. 101 days until half of us, statistically, set New Year’s resolutions.
102 days until most of us start to break them.
But what if we thought of September 22 as 101 mornings to reset our focus? 101 opportunities to build up some easy new habits that start directing our fresh new ideas right now? By January 1, we’d be pros already!
We trick ourselves into thinking that equipment will create focus. New notebooks, new plans, even new clothes, as if swapping the surface might transform what’s inside.
But Henry David Thoreau’s words, as relevant today as when he wrote them, in so many areas of life, bear scrutiny (rather than ‘baring’ it, perhaps): “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”
Focus doesn’t come from new tools. It comes from clearing away the fog. My goodness, we are surrounded by it just now. The noise, the busywork, the expectations, the things over which we have no control. Without an ability to clear all that we can never see what actually matters. We can never change our corner of the world for the better.
That’s why late September matters more than January.
This is when the tank feels half-empty, whichever hemisphere you’re in. When calendars are full, and energy is stretched. When the fog is thickest.
And that’s precisely when the smallest repeatable changes count most. Not a sweeping reinvention. Not a fresh identity. Just a different rhythm: a shift in how you pay attention, how you say yes (and no), how you cut through.