Restarting your year, month, day

I have often said I go into hibernation from about Thanksgiving until my birthday, which is near the end of January.

In retrospect, I think my latest hibernation started in early November with the US election. It was a high-stress time for me, plus getting dark out early, and light out late, and then all the political events that were like watching the wreck that I could not take my eyes off.

Around inauguration day, I decided that there was no point in trying to do very much in January. I thought I’ll just let the month go on and not try to focus on anything in the way of writing or teaching — or anything-ing until February. It just seemed to my brain that January had to run its course and go away. It did. On January 30, I made a sticky note for my desktop and it says:

2021 RESTART = INGING

• Yogaing
• Walking
• Biking
• Writing
• Teaching
• Podcasting
• Webinaring

It’s a lot of ing words. And not all of them are English as I made some up by adding ing — but you get the point.

Ing words are movement oriented — they are about something in motion, something that is going to happen or is happening. That’s where my mind went regarding February 1. January was ending and I could restart …

As I said in the title Restarting your ...

Is it a restart of 2021? is it a restart of my professional life? or a restart of?

What I like best about the concept of ing is that any day, any moment, any month, any anything, can be a restart or a reset. That's why I do not make New Year's resolutions. There's nothing magical about January 1. But for me it comes in the middle of my hibernation so maybe I have some other thoughts about what January 1st means. It's also the period of time between holidays and my birthday and I've usually lived in places where it's winter weather which is not bad because I ski but sometimes it can be very dreary out there.

Also resolutions have such a quality of should must and ought about them that my brain immediately goes no no no not now, not ever.

Don't tell me what I should and should not do.

And as we know, resolutions often get broken within a short period of time after being made. But there are people who do it every year and places like gyms and health spas make a lot of money on that because people sign up and then they never come. So January 1 is never ever a restart or reset for me. There are other beginnings that happen during the year that I sometimes use as a reset, but it depends on where my head is at the time.

So what did I do to restart this time? This February 2021?

I started my day with yogaing — which I used to do regularly but have not been doing so during my hibernation. It felt good to do that kind of stretching. And as I have gotten older let me tell you I was very much in need of that stretching.

And if nothing else came from that restart - my body told me I really need to do yogaing as part of my restart much more frequently.

Next I started doing some writing. I also went through my emails and went unsubscribing from several that I have not been looking at and have just been deleting as they arrive in my inbox. That felt good too and it is an ing that was not on my list.

Soon it will be February x, y, z, etc. — and I will continue this restart as it feels like my brain can get wrapped around it and enjoy it. I’m thinking that once I start getting into more of these ings, I will be adding to the list and doing more and more restarting.

The nice thing is if there's a day where I don't feel like doing any inging I don't have to. Well, except I have a dog so walking is something that happens just about every day of the year. It's just that there are days we do more of it and days we do less of it so the walking on my list is just let's do more of it.

The more business-y parts of my ing list will take time because they need to have more work put into them - like finishing the two books I started, doing a webinar, finishing creating the courses I have started, and starting a podcast.

These are things that I cannot do that quickly - yet maybe once I really get back into my inging - I can speed up my productivity engine.

The nice thing about restarting or doing ing activities is that any day of the year, month, or week can be your restart day!

Try it. And let me know what works for you. We can all use help being more productive and less stressed.

Thank you for reading!