Five things worth your attention this week. Let’s go.
The Shift
started planning next year to avoid finishing this one
It looked like diligence. New planner, new system, a fresh set of goals, eleven weeks early.
But planning next year is the clean part. A year that hasn’t started yet has nothing in it that went wrong.
Finishing is the other half. Closing out this year means looking at the thing still open since March, the goal I missed by a lot, the project I quietly stopped mentioning. Planning skips all of that by moving the scoreboard to a year nobody has scored yet.
Here’s the tell: if next year’s list has items from this year on it, lightly renamed, it isn’t a plan. It’s rollover.
And a plan built without reviewing the year you actually had will repeat the year you actually had. A January designed in October is designed with no data.
So — close before you open.
Finishing doesn’t mean completing everything. It means sorting what’s left into three piles: done, carries, dies.
The third pile is the whole point. Most of what rolls from one year to the next rolls because nobody ever said no to it. If nothing dies in December, January starts at capacity.
Then plan. The review is what the plan gets made of.
You can’t start a year you haven’t ended.
The System
five questions, asked once per email
In order. Every one ends somewhere that isn’t your inbox.
Back in the Daily Close, I put “inbox at zero” on the checklist and never said how.
Here’s how.
For each email, ask until you reach the question where it’s resolved:
Should this have reached me at all? No → unsubscribe, then archive.
Does it need anything from me? No → archive.
Can I be done in two minutes? Yes → do it, then archive.
Is the next move someone else’s? Yes → Then send your part and put it in Waiting On with a date to chase.
And if it’s none of those, the only question left is whether you’re deciding or doing: a decision goes on the Decide list with a decide-by date, work becomes a task with a date. Then archive the email.
The one thing this does that I actually care about: I never read the same message twice. The hours were never in answering email. They were in opening the same thing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and deferring it each time.
What it won’t do: it takes about three weeks before the first pass stops feeling slower than just reading things. The two-minute rule turns into a trap if your two minutes is really ten. And if your job is genuinely reactive — people expect you inside ten minutes — the model partly breaks and you need a different rhythm.
Inbox zero isn’t a state you reach. It’s a pass you run.
Get the printable. Inbox Pass
The Habit
I don’t write in a blank notebook. I answer a question, one question, three or four sentences, and I stop. I do it at night on purpose. A blank page at the end of a long day asks you to decide what mattered before you’ve written anything, and by then I don’t have that in me. A question does the deciding.
I wrote thirty of them, one per tab. Make your own copy → Your Focused Five 30 Day Journal.
Worth Your Attention
Medix 5.5
The heat comes on and skin changes inside a week — tight after a shower, dry patches at shins and elbows that weren’t there in August.
What I use is three things, and the order matters more than any one of them. I use the Glycolic + Lactic Acid body wash in the shower, which exfoliates rather than just cleans. Collagen + Peptides in the morning. Retinol + Ferulic Acid at night.
The split isn’t fussiness. Retinol makes skin more sun-sensitive, so it belongs at night- the rule everyone follows on their face and then abandons at the jawline. That’s what this brand gets right: face ingredients in body-sized bottles, at body-sized prices. All three run about $60 and last months.
One note if you’re new to acids: use the wash on its own for a couple of weeks before you add the retinol. All three at once on October skin is how people end up irritated and blaming the product.
Medix 5.5 Retinol Body Lotion
Medix 5.5 Collagen + Peptides Body Treatment Cream
Medix 5.5 Glycolic + Lactic Acid Body Wash
Affiliate links — I earn a small commission at no cost to you.
The Question
What are you still doing out of momentum that you’d never choose if you were starting today?