#10 - Beginnings
Enough is enough, new beginnings, and perfect timing
I’ve always found the New Year useful.
It’s a chance to clean up the previous year’s mess and start a fresh.
There’s usually quite the mess.
Enough is enough
Jesus. I thought. My head pounding.
That escalated.
It was December 2018, and the morning after an annual Christmas lunch with some friends. Lunch is a loose term, it usually raged 15-20 hours into the not-so-early-hours of the morning.
A search in my pockets revealed £400 worth of receipts from a rum bar. F**k, I don’t even like rum!
Flashes of the night came back to me; being thrown out of one establishment after another.
What on earth am I doing with my life? I thought.
Luckily the new year was approaching.
Christmas was a chance for me to regroup. A well-timed conversation with Hector Alexander lead to a challenge of three months off-drinking from January. Just what I needed.
It turned out to be easy; a pleasure in fact.
Soon it was over and in April I was back on the booze. Six months of big nights and hangovers followed until, in November 2019, I packed it in for good.
The 14 months since have been wonderful.
New Beginnings
New beginnings are a useful tool for Ben and I running Unplugged.
So much of startup success is down to persistence. As long as you’re headed in the right direction it comes down to staying power.
And that’s easier said than done. Persisting is tricky; projects get less exciting and systems slip into disorder.
What’s left is the energy of the team; alas, that to gets whittled away.
New beginnings are a chance to re-energise.
New Years. The first of the month. The completion of a new funding round. The start of a new lockdown. Every new beginning is a chance to rejuvenate efforts.
I’ve loved the time off over Christmas but now’s the time to take advantage of the New Year and shake off the cobwebs.
Perfect Timing
Daniel Pink has written a whole book about the psychology of this:
When- The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
So what’s going on?
These new beginnings are what Social Scientists call “Temporal Landmarks” and they work for two reasons.
Firstly they allow us to open new “mental accounts”.
The mistakes of the previous period are confined to history and we can move on with our lives with a clear mind.
Secondly they help us see the forest for the trees.
It’s easy to lose track of the big picture. A new start is a chance for us to reflect on the big picture and realign our efforts.
What I’m Reading
Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts:
Gripping. Quite the story! Napoleon was a remarkable character; flawed (aren’t we all) but remarkable.
A groundbreaking book. Turns out I’ve been breathing wrong for 26 years!
Off the back of reading this I’m currently relearning how to breathe. Watch this space…
A final thought
“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
- T.S. Eliot