SimplHabits

By late February, motivation isn’t the problem. Noise is. The mess after a holiday. The half-kept routines. The feeling that everything slightly slipped. What we need now isn’t a reset. We need a rhythm. If January was about starting, February is about stabilizing. When the Holiday Ends… and the Overwhelm Begins After Valentine’s Day, I can get overwhelmed. The wrapping paper. The packaging. The gifts I gave. The gifts I received. If I’m not careful, the visual clutter quietly ruins the sweetness of the memory. This year, I tried something different. I gave myself a gift. A narrow table to replace the non-functional glass one next to my bed. It sounds small. It was small. But it changed everything. Now my cables are organized. My books have a place. My everyday bedside things aren’t sliding around on glass. I have a cozy place to drink coffee in the morning. Instead of feeling overwhelmed after Valentine’s...

By February, most habits have already unraveled. Not because we didn’t care. Not because we weren’t disciplined enough. But because life showed up. For me, that lesson came early—and hard. In 2020, I got sick with long COVID. My body changed quickly. My energy disappeared. The routines I relied on simply stopped working. I didn’t just fall off habits. I lost the ability to keep them the way I used to. And that forced me to learn something I never truly understood before: Habits have to meet you where you are—or they won’t last. Falling Off Is Information, Not Failure When a habit stops working, it’s tempting to assume we are the problem. But often, the habit was built for a version of you that no longer exists. When my health shifted, I had to stop asking: “Why can’t I do this anymore?” And start asking: “What does support look like now?” That question changes everything. Restart With the Sm...