Loop 005 · about 3 minutes
New here? Welcome. A few of you found this newsletter through another one this week. I'm Mahmoud, a software engineer who wrote a book about building habits the way engineers build systems: so they keep running on bad days. Every Sunday you get one idea like this one, in about three minutes.
"I'll start fresh next week."
You've said it. I've said it. It feels like a plan. Most of the time, it's permission to do nothing until then.
Here's how the fresh-start trap works:
You fall off on a Wednesday.
Restarting in the middle of the week feels messy, so you wait for a clean start. Next week. The first of the month. January.
The days in between become free days. Might as well enjoy them.
The fresh start shows up, and you restart at full speed to make up for lost time. That's the hardest version of the habit, on your first day back.
It doesn't stick. You pick a new fresh start.
Every time around, the gap gets longer and the restart gets bigger.
In software, when something breaks, we don't wait until the first of the month to fix it. We ship the smallest change that gets things working again, today. Then we improve it from there. We call that a hotfix.
Your habits need the same thing. Not a big restart next week. A tiny one, today.
Fell off the gym? Do 10 push-ups before bed tonight.
Stopped reading? Read one page right now.
Budget fell apart? Open your bank app today. Just look at it.
Ate badly all week? Make your next meal a decent one. Not your next week. Your next meal.
Haven't called your mom in a while? Text her now.
It works because the restart is so small there's nothing to dread. And it breaks the all-or-nothing thinking that fresh starts are built on. A tiny restart today isn't nothing. It's the habit, still alive.
The best day to restart a habit isn't next week or the first of the month. It's the day you notice you stopped.
The bad-week version
Next time you catch yourself saying "I'll start fresh next week":
Ask: what's the smallest version I could do today?
Make it so small it takes under five minutes.
Do it before the day ends.
Plan the bigger version for next week if you want. But today already counts.
One question
What's a habit you've been "restarting next week" for a while?
Hit reply. I read every one.
Mahmoud
P.S. If you are new and want the full framework behind this newsletter, it is in my book, Better With Every Loop, on Kindle and in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFRMDLBT