New Year, who dis?

Every January, we do the same strange little ritual. We call it a “fresh start” and pretend the calendar is magical. It isn’t, but that doesn’t mean the rollover can’t be valuable.

Look, it doesn’t look like 2026 is going to be the stable year we haven’t had for a decade, so let’s not fool ourselves. There will be volatility and risk aplenty, but any good trader will tell you that with volatility also comes opportunity.

Next year will be filled with risk, sure. But if there is no way to avoid the risk, what exactly is the benefit of thinking and acting conservatively? What the new year is actually good for is inspection that leads to action. 

Call it placebo, call it the budget cycle, but the new year is perfect for setting aside some time to work ON the business, not just IN the business. Start finding new processes, systems, and organizational paradigms. Don’t go looking for a magic fix but commit to trying new ways of thinking and executing.

As I’ve discussed before, what usually slows us down isn’t a dramatic failure. It’s a pattern, a “this is just how we do it” that slowly hardens into a wall. You’re busy. You’re trying to keep customers happy, keep payroll clean, keep the wheels from falling off. You don’t wake up thinking, “Today I’d like to accidentally repeat last year’s mistakes.” You just do what worked last time. Until it doesn’t. The duct tape works until the load is too heavy.

What did you normalize last year that you shouldn’t keep?

Not what went wrong once. What went wrong repeatedly and got excused?

If you only do one thing this week: name three patterns you can’t afford to carry into the new year.

Put this on your calendar. Actually do it. No perfect setting required. Have a meeting with your leadership, board, counselors all and examine the failure points.

Look for the quiet drains: rework, repeat calls, duplicate approvals, constant “quick questions,” meetings that could’ve been messages, messages that should’ve been decisions. Were there recurring customer complaints? Did someone fail to realize that a task was their job … repeatedly? 

If something keeps resurfacing, it’s not a one-off. It’s a system.

Address the things you avoided because they felt annoying, political, or “not urgent”. Be honest. This is usually the thing that quietly taxes everything else.

Now that you have the list comes the hard part. Commit to trying one thing. You don’t have to build Rome in a day, but it is imperative that you don’t avoid changing anything just so you don’t rock the boat. You won’t get it all right all the time, but that’s ok, because the old way wasn’t working.

A quick warning though, because the new year can make people reckless.

Don’t launch a new system or process just to avoid a hard conversation.

If the real issue is someone is in the wrong seat, a team that is afraid to tell the truth, or leadership keeps changing priorities midstream, then no productivity hack will save you.

- Dylan