In January, we tried. In February, we flex.
Reflections on Try January, plus a few great links and posts I loved recently
We’re one month in to 2025, and if you feel like the theme was more “survival” than “triumph,” you’re not alone. As I wrote a few days ago, despite the fresh start effect, January is never an easy month for starting new routines and working toward goals (sickness! darkness! cold!), and the political turmoil of January 2025 in particular may have made all of this feel a little pointless, or at least really hard to focus on. We discussed all of this in the HTM chat, and folks shared that they felt “fried” and that January was 90,000 days long (lol/sob).
But this is why I’ve felt grateful that instead of setting traditional New Year’s resolutions, I spent the month of January “trying on” a few goals to see how they felt, and to notice what worked — and didn’t work — to help me stick with them. It really took the pressure off, as did remembering that February 1, too, is a fresh start. I also took a frequency approach instead of a consistency approach, which helped a lot too. More on that here:
I had five goals to check out for Try January:
Only one coffee per day
Work toward a pull-up
Take more walks
Organize something
No shopping (as in, no buying clothes for me)
I set up a whiteboard to help me track how many times I engaged with each goal each weekday. As you can see, I had 25 opportunities (5 goals x 5 days), and my goal was to check 15–20 boxes per week.
Okay, so here’s what I learned.
It was weirdly easier to cut things out than add things in.
This kind of shocked me. If you tell me I can’t have French fries (why would you do that?!), my brain immediately tells me I need all the French fries. I cannot hang at all with a feeling of scarcity or deprivation. But somehow, cutting down to one coffee per day (from two, my previous typical daily intake) and avoiding shopping for clothes were both really easy. Okay, yes, I did have some initial digestive challenges, but that situation went back to normal after a couple of days. And no shopping just…wasn’t a big deal. I guess it helps that it’s too cold to wear anything very cute right now, and everyone is sick so there’s really nowhere to go, but it was fine.
Huge caveat here: I am not suggesting everyone run around and start cutting things out! There’s a slippery slope into dieting and actual deprivation that I am not recommending you get into, at all. But if you also have habits that aren’t serving you — doomscrolling before bed, buying shit you don’t need from Amazon — it may be easier than you think to just…stop doing them. (Or at least, easier than adding in a potentially time-consuming or difficult other thing.) IDK! What do you guys think?
The tracking was too much.
I expected to feel jazzed about checking boxes every day, and I did for the first week, but after that it just felt like another thing I had to remember to do. I totally stopped doing it after about two weeks. I may be totally delulu, but I’m going to try again this month, but keep it a little simpler: Since I’m on the no-shopping, one-coffee train with no issues (I literally accomplished those every single day last month), I’m just not going to worry about tracking those. (It’s entirely possible this will backfire because those were the easiest things to check off, but I kind of wonder if it’s better to focus on rewarding myself for the items that take more effort?) Here’s what my whiteboard looks like as of yesterday:
Just a little cleaner and less overwhelming IMO. I need to follow my own advice about reframing what “counts.”
The hardest items for me to keep up with last month were going for walks and organizing something. And I’d said from the beginning that a 10-minute walk counted, and I could organize a tiny shelf or drawer or something, and that would warrant a check mark. But it was actually really hard to put that into action. Every time I thought about taking a walk, I’d see that I had a meeting coming up in 30 minutes or something, and decide it wasn’t worth it. And every time I thought about organizing something, my mind would go to a closet or a whole dresser and I’d feel defeated right away.
Yesterday, I was determined to take a walk even though I had very little time. So when I needed to pop out to grab some groceries, I set a timer for five minutes and started walking. When the timer went off, I turned around and walked back, popping by the grocery store on the way. Total time: 15 minutes (including five minutes of grocery shopping). And friends, I felt really good! I managed to make it outside while the sun was still out, and it was sort of almost warm-ish, and I looked around the neighborhood and smiled at a few dogs. And this was the whole point of this goal! Not to do cardio or traverse new paths — just to get outside and get a little sunshine and dopamine to help me through the day. Ugh, I was very annoyed with January Me for not following my own rules.
I also organized the tiniest possible shelf yesterday, and it took truly 45 seconds and felt so good that I went ahead and tacked on the shelf above it (another 45 seconds). Gotta keep the eyes on the prize: Just a tiny little bit at a time, and getting into the habit.
So: It’s February now, and time to get a little flexible with those goals: Take the time to consider what worked well, what didn’t work at all, and how you might like to adjust things to continue to work toward your goals this month. Remember to consider the value behind each goal and not get so stuck on the specifics that you toss aside perfectly good alternatives that still help you get where you want to go.
I’ll be right there with you.
Ahead, a few links you might be interested in.
First, I was back in The New York Times yesterday with an article about how to get the most out of Pilates. Friends, this was a really tricky one, surprisingly! Pilates is a complex space, with lots of classes calling themselves Pilates but not really adhering to the original method. I liked the way my experts explained these differences neutrally — they didn’t suggest that high-intensity, muscle-quaking reformer classes didn’t “count” as Pilates or were bad in some way, they just helped clarify that you may have a very different experience, and different benefits, in a setting like this compared to a traditional or classical Pilates class. Anyway, I loved their advice about letting yourself be a beginner, using props and modifications to deepen your practice, and more. (NYT)
On the one hand, the “can you be fat and fit” discussion is very boring. (And fitness is morally neutral.) But on the other hand, the more high-quality research we get into debunking the BMI as a marker of wellbeing, and the more media coverage we get about that research, maybe the more we can continue to shift the conversation about exercise away from weight loss and toward moving to support your wellbeing. This new review (fair warning: lots of BMI, ob*sity, and calorie talk in that link) of 20 studies found that aerobic fitness — as measured by VO2 max — was a far better predictor of longevity than BMI. (Well+Good)
I appreciated the brilliant
’s take on the U.S. Surgeon General’s alcohol announcement.
I really liked Sohee Carpenter and Venus Lau’s ideas for improving your hip hinge. Learning a proper hip hinge can be tough — many of us end up rounding or arching our backs, or over- or under-bending our knees — but these drills can make a difference to getting more comfortable with the movement pattern, which is so foundational (hello, deadlifts!).
Shoutout to
, and many others for urging us all to use 5 Calls — just a wonderfully easy way to call your reps and let them know what you think about ~gestures wildly~ all of this shit. In my experience, if you get a real person on the phone from your senator or congressperson’s office, they are really nice and the whole thing is honestly not a big deal at all (and you often just end up leaving a voicemail). That said, I would also urge you to look for ways to be more active out in the streets: We can only do so much from our phones. Take a Know Your Rights training (the ACLU hosts two per month but lots of local groups also do this) if there’s been increased ICE activity in your area; look for organizations and grassroots groups to join and support the safety of your neighbors.Finally, it should surprise no one — and infuriate everyone — that Black women not only experience higher rates of maternal mortality, but also are more likely to have conditions like endometriosis and breast cancer diagnosed at later stages, which means more suffering and worse outcomes, according to this Instagram post from pelvic floor PT Dr. Janelle Howell. They also experience miscarriage, sexual abuse and sexual assault, cervical cancer, and painful sex at higher rates than other races. As Dr. Howell shares in a followup post, “Being affirmed, respected, and paid well in society is also what’s needed to support the health, wellness, and elevation of Black women.”
Thanks for reading — talk soon.
xo
Anna
Thank you for the mention!