How to stay stuck
If you want the rest of 2026 to look much like 2025, there’s a reliable way to do it.
Start the year with reasonable intentions, tell yourself you’ll be more deliberate this time, then let the pace pick up before you’ve had a chance to orient yourself properly.
The inbox fills, meetings multiply, and the days start getting dominated by whatever lands first. You reassure yourself you’ll step back and think once things calm down, but they don’t, and before long it’s the end of March and you’ve already spent the a quarter of the year responding rather than choosing.
Nothing dramatic goes wrong. You’re competent, you keep things moving, and from the outside it all looks fine. But underneath, a quieter pattern sets in: the sense that your life and work are happening slightly at you, rather than being actively directed by you.
That’s how capable people stay stuck.
The less obvious costs
This way of living rarely triggers a crisis, which is why it’s so easy to tolerate for years. But it shows up in subtler, cumulative ways.
You notice it when Sunday evenings carry a familiar heaviness that isn’t quite dread, but isn’t ease either. You notice it with money, where you're earning well but lack a clear sense of what it’s all for in a more meaningful way. And you notice it at home, in a shorter fuse, a sharper edge, a tendency to be snappier with the people you care about most, because work has already taken more than its share of attention and patience.
Most personal development plans don’t really address this. They focus on goals, outputs, and performance, but not on how your life feels while you’re achieving them, or whether the direction you’re travelling in still makes sense to you.
So here’s a different starting point.
A short exercise to interrupt the drift
I’ve shared this with teams and leaders over the years, including people working in fuel poverty and other areas of crisis, where the pace is relentless and the emotional load is heavy.
It isn’t complicated, and it doesn’t require you to make any big decisions today. All it asks for is about twenty minutes of uninterrupted time, and a willingness to be honest with yourself rather than impressive.
Step 1 — Time travel
Imagine it’s New Year’s Eve 2026.
You’re looking back on the year, checking in with yourself about what actually happened, what you let go of along the way, and who you became in the process. This has been the best year of your life — not in anyone else’s terms, just in yours.
Write down two or three words you’d use to describe the year as a whole.
Step 2 — Notes
You:
By the end of 2026, my body is…
Looking back on this year, I’m glad I…
On Sunday nights, I’m generally feeling…
Your inner circle
Choose one person you will have built a stronger relationship with this year.
This relationship is more…
When I spend time with them, I’m .... rather than ....
One moment from the year I look back on with pride is when we…
If someone else were to ask them how they feel about your relationship now they say......
Money and work
When I look at my finances, my response is… because…
By the end of the year, I’m proud that I…
When I think about work at the end of 2026, I’m clear about…
Step 3 — Write your press release
Now write a short report to yourself at the end of the year, starting with:
“Well done. 2026 was the year we…”
Include what changed, and what didn’t. Include how you handled work, money, relationships, and any holidays or breaks. This isn’t for LinkedIn, and it isn’t meant to sound polished. It’s a way of telling the truth to yourself about what mattered most and the impact it's had in ways you care about deeply.
Step 4 — Final check
Read it back and complete these two sentences:
"Reading this back I feel...."
"If I were to ensure this happened then...."
Now ask yourself one final question:
What does this inspire me to do differently this week — something I can realistically act on?
That’s the point where this stops being reflective and starts being practical.
Why this is worth doing
People don’t usually stay stuck because they lack ambition or insight. They stay stuck because they never pause long enough to build a life by design rather than default.
This exercise won’t solve everything. But it does restore a sense of authorship, and that alone tends to shift how Mondays feel, how you make decisions, and how much of yourself is left for the people you go home to.
