Personal essays
My second word of 2026.
Breaking an old one
Last week about midway through my essay I wrote, “And so, my first word for 2025 is ‘Happiness’.”
Right away - like within ten minutes of pressing “Send”, three people had written to tell me about it.
I look at that as both good news and bad news.
The good news is - people are reading this and care about what I have to say.
The bad news is, once I’ve pressed “Send” I have no way to fix a mistake.
It’s like the old days when you’d be a week into the new year and you’re still writing last year’s date on your checks.
“Daniel,” no one writes checks anymore.
Anyway, I’d been writing or typing 2025 for a year and it had become a habit.
Little did they know, my second word for 2026 (HA - got it), is “Habit.”
Like teeth
It wouldn’t occur to me to go to bed at night without brushing my teeth. I also brush my teeth first thing in the morning.
I never think to myself, “Oh, I’m too tired, I’ll just skip it.” It would be unthinkable to get into bed without brushing my teeth.
I know I wasn’t born that way. People don’t begin life conditioned to brushing their teeth. So how do I incorporate other things with the same almost autonomic commitment?
In a recent podcast episode on habits, Andrew Huberman talked about breaking the day up into three parts. You should tackle the habits that have the greatest friction in the first eight hours after you wake up. Put the “nice to do” ones in the second eight hours.
Everything falls apart for me in the third eight hours. More honestly about midway through that second eight hours, I’m sitting on the couch pretending to do some work with the television on in the background.
It’s become as much of a habit as brushing my teeth. It’s sits there along side with taking my phone out of my pocket every three minutes. These are habits I’m looking to break this year.
So could anyone
For the most part I’ve taken my phone out and am looking at the screen without having anything particular in mind. It wasn’t purposeful.
As for TV, I’m mostly letting some algorithm or another set my playlist. It’s mainly british mysteries and panel shows, but lately whoever is programming my life seems to have found every version or cover of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” and decided I need to listen to it.
Before that it was every version or cover of the Pogues “Fairytale of New York.”
Even if I’m not paying attention, I become aware of the song as the male character sings, “I could have been someone.”
I look up at the screen as the female character responds, “Well, so could anyone.”
So could anyone.
Step one is probably to turn this thing off. Well stay for the rest of the song - the end of that stanza will tear out your heart.
Now turn it off.
It’s like writing 2025 - breaking habits is hard.
The habit habit
Huberman suggest you choose six new habits you want to adopt and do them all.
Every day for the next twenty-one day, do four of your habits.
Which one should you do? I’ll say more about that next week when I tell you word number three - but the answer is, it doesn’t really matter.
Here are the habits I’ve been working on this year.
Keep a daily journal where I plan out my day and track what I’ve done. Also, keep a sketch journal where I draw one or more sketches and write some words down on a page every day.
I’ve been meditating in between my last two trips from my bed to the bathroom each morning and then doing Yoga or Tai Chi.
I’ve been working on my drawing and handwriting and I’ve been taking a walk everyday.
Well - that’s what I meant to do. We’re more than half of the way to twenty-one days and I haven’t gone on a walk once.
I’ve done most of the rest of them every day. Many of them feel as if they’re becoming habits.
Six habits? That’s nuts.
Maybe.
But Huberman says the habit we’re working on is the habit of habits.
So far, I’m liking it enough that it’s my second word of the year.
Will I keep any of these habits up? I don’t know. I think so, but I don’t know.
The current earworm from Natasha tells me that “Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.”
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 303. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe