The first of January, again

It's the first of January and you feel unusually clear. Last year is behind you and it has a shape now, and the shape has some things in it you'd rather it didn't. So you write something down, or you say it to whoever's in the room, or you just decide it in the shower. This year you get fit. This year the book gets written. This year the money gets sorted. It feels like a decision and it feels good, and for a few days the feeling carries you. You go for the run. You open the document. You look at the bank app without flinching.

Then it's the third week of January. It's a Tuesday and it's raining. You got home at half past six because the last meeting ran over, there's nothing in for dinner, and someone needs a form signed for tomorrow. The run isn't happening and you know it before you've taken your coat off. You'll go tomorrow. Tomorrow has its own reason. By the second week of February the goal is a slightly sore spot you avoid pressing, and by March you've stopped noticing that you've stopped. Next January you'll write the same thing down. You may have written it down for four or five Januaries now. Each year the wish is the same, and each year the belief behind it is a little thinner.

This is an invented January, but I'd guess yours is close. Some words. The wish is the goal as you first state it, which is nearly always an outcome. Fit. Fluent. Published. Solvent. The picture is the image of yourself having got there, which is what you're enjoying on the first of January. The good fortnight is the first two weeks, when the picture is fresh and the days are still holiday-shaped. The drop is the point, usually in a wet week of February, where the wish stops happening. The rerun is the same wish set again the next year. The Tuesday is any ordinary day, tired and full, on which the wish actually has to become an action or not. The Tuesday sentence is what this book replaces the wish with, a line about what you'll do, when and where, on that day. The least version is the smallest form of the action that you'd still count. And the Sunday five minutes is the weekly look at how the sentence went.

Before you go on, do one thing. Write down the wishes you've made for the last three Januaries, as best you remember them. Next to each, write what happened to it and roughly when. Most people who do this find the same wish two or three times, and a drop at about the same point each year. That repeat is the habit, and it's the thing this book is about.