Stop waiting for New Year’s day!
Every day is a new beginning. Pick a day and start.
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 268
At the time of writing this it’s the beginning of December.
A new (calendar) year is four weeks away.
No doubt between now and Christmas, someone will ask you what your new year’s resolution will be.
Maybe you want to lose weight, or start a business. Or maybe you want to learn how to play a musical instrument. All of those new dreams. All of those fresh starts. They’re exciting!
Yet sadly, most people’s new year’s resolutions fizzle out after a week or two because they don’t have a solid plan in place, a plan they can keep referring back to, one that informs their decision making skills and that keeps them on track. That fresh start often rolls off the rails, making the early part of the new year more miserable than it needs to be.
But here’s the thing: your fresh start doesn’t need a calendar’s permission to get going.
There’s a peculiar magic we assign to January 1st. It’s almost as if it were a universal line in the sand, a collective deep breath we take before we leap into a new, shinier version of ourselves.
We treat January 1st as if it’s the only acceptable day to launch a new business, or to start a fitness journey, or on which to finally build that content strategy we’ve been dreaming about.
But why not today as in the new start day, right here? How about the second Tuesday in April, or a random Thursday in October? Why does it have to be January 1st?
Sadly, waiting for New Year’s Day is one of the most limiting beliefs holding creators and entrepreneurs back. The truth is, any given Monday is a more powerful day for a new beginning than January 1st will ever be.
Let me explain.
The tyranny of the perfect start
The idea of waiting until New Year creates an unsustainable fantasy of the ideal and perfect start. This is an idea that’s setting us up for failure.
We imagine ourselves on January 1st, well-rested and brimming with dedication and resolve, facing and attacking our goals with flawless, focused discipline. We’re going to show people what we’re made of! We’re going to change the world! We’re gonna do it and do it better and bigger than ever before!
Until we don’t.
Sadly, life doesn’t work that way. Usually, and although we start out full of vim and vigour, by the time January 14th arrives you’re already behind. You get a cold. Or a client emergency pops up. Or a pipe bursts, or something somewhere crops up unannounced and scuppers your chances.
The “perfect start” is instantly run off the rails and corrupted, and for many, that’s enough of a reason to abandon the entire plan. We tell ourselves, “Well, I’ve already messed up. I’ll try again next year.”
This is a catastrophic waste of momentum. You’ve just given a single day on the calendar the power to veto your progress for the next 365 days. What is the sense in that?
The power of the Atomic Start
Instead of initiating any sort of grand, annual perfect start, I advocate for what I call the Atomic Start, an idea that’s influenced by James Clear’s book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (2018).
An Atomic Start is a small, immediate, and repeatable step.
It’s the decision on a rainy Tuesday afternoon to finally outline that first blog post.
It’s the choice on a Friday morning that instead of scrolling through social media that you’ll set up a camera and sort out a microphone and sketch out what you’ll say and film one short video.
It’s scheduling half an hour on a random Wednesday afternoon to map out your content for the next two weeks.
Atomic Starts give you three amazing new superpowers because they empower you to:
Build immediate momentum: Action begets action, which begets more action. Writing one email today proves you can do it. In its turn, that one small win creates a tiny ripple of confidence that makes the next action less scary and that much easier. Momentum isn’t built in a single, annual leap; it’s built in hundreds of small, consistent steps.
Make you agile: The world moves fast. If you have a brilliant business idea in March, waiting until January to start is a nine-month penalty. If you notice your audience engaging more with video in July, why on Earth would you wait until the New Year to pivot your strategy? Success doesn’t wait for the calendar; it rewards those who adapt now.
Remove the fear of failure: If you think about it, a New Year’s Resolution is a massive, high-stakes mental bet that’s enmeshed in social pressure and personal mindset. If your bold new beginning fails, often, your mind will try to convince you that you’ve failed for the whole year. Meanwhile, an Atomic Start is a lower-stakes experiment. If one piece of content flops, you haven’t blown your entire annual plan. You’ve simply gathered valuable data about what was less well received. This allows you to course-correct today for tomorrow, rather than thinking you have to put everything off until next year.
Your “New Year’s Day” is today
We tend to look at elements of life in cycles—seasons, months, good weather, bad weather—and so on. Cycles are good. They remind us of the constant motion of life. But when we focus on annual cycles, we miss the point that the shorter cycles we experience are the things that make each day what it is: a matrix of seconds, minutes, and hours; two halves, one of day, one of night. When we look at things on a more granular level, suddenly, the cycles of a year become less daunting.
The most successful people I know don’t live their lives in annual cycles. They live and work within a series of weekly and daily cycles that they repeat over and over again.
They understand that every single morning is a new year for their habits, and every Monday is a new year for their goals.
That content calendar you’ve been putting off?
You don’t need a ball dropping in Times Square or fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to start it. You need 30 minutes and a decision to start now.
That new service you want to launch? Stop waiting for the “right time.” Map out the first step and take it this week.
If you only ever let the calendar control your life you’ll never get anything done. The calendar does not control your potential. You do.
The most powerful starting line is the one you draw for yourself, at any time, on any day, regardless of what the calendar says.
So, forget about New Year’s Day. Make a decision on your own Atomic Start and make something happen today.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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P.S. If you found this useful, share it with another creator who needs an ego check (in a nice way). Want more unfiltered takes on content creation? Join my newsletter. No fluff, just the stuff that works.
Next time on Shaking the Tree: Plan a month’s worth of content in 30 minutes
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.