2025 was my ‘year of yes.’ It’s been a good year, but also an enlightening one. It helped me realize a pattern in my behavior that I also see in a lot of other smart, capable people. When we feel stuck, or when progress feels slower than it “should,” when a goal starts to wobble under the weight of real life, our instinct is rarely to stop. Our instinct is to add.
We look for more information. We add technology. We search for another approach, one that surely will be the thing that gets us back on track, right? Oh, the comfort of the feeling of forward motion (even though you know you’re standing still).
To be clear, I am not villainizing curiosity. In my opinion, curiosity is one of the best parts of being alive. What I’m talking about here is having the room to make use of the amazing discoveries that curiosity affords us.
Because here’s the part we tend to forget: Skill and mastery don’t simply arise from exposure. Skill requires space for repetition, application, and feedback. And, unfortunately, sometimes those three things aren’t as fun as we’d like them to be. They also require the exact resources modern life is best at quietly stealing: time, attention, and emotional bandwidth.
This is all to say that the problem is rarely laziness, but instead one of capacity. It’s preserved space and the resolve to stack our obligations slowly enough that they don’t trip over each other. In my opinion, this is something that we folks from the world of self-help don’t talk about enough: change initiatives have a really low success rate when they’re executed against a full plate. The most successful path to getting better at anything doesn’t start with pouring more in; it starts by removing what’s not working.
Serendipitously, that’s the throughline I kept coming back to in both interviews this quarter. Erin pointed to a truth most course creators and learners don’t want to hear: simply consuming content is not competence. If your goal is behavior change, you cannot just learn more. You have to first remove (unlearn) what’s not working to get better.
Jon came at the same problem from a different angle. He highlighted that when it comes to betterment, we’re great at addition and terrible at subtraction. We live in a world that celebrates accretion, and then we act surprised when we cannot follow through on what matters because we’re burnt out.
Trevor Noah dropped a piece of advice last month meant for folks with ADHD, but I think, in our overstimulated world, it’s helpful for anyone: Start with ‘no.’ That doesn’t mean you have to end with no; it just means that we set ourselves up for failure when we lack constraints, as well as say yes to too much.
So, while I usually go into the New Year with big plans about what I plan to build, this year I’m starting with what I can remove. This is a new approach for me, so I’m not sure how it will fit yet, but I’m excited to see what grows when I clear the weeds a bit. How about you? What’s your mantra going into 2026? (Honestly, please reply. I’d love to know.)
Leading thought: Jon challenges the modern obsession with consistency. He argues that consistency is what keeps you from sliding backward, but intensity is what helps you gain. The catch is that real progress requires seasonality, choosing one priority to push hard for a defined window, then placing everything else on deliberate maintenance. Without that trade-off, we keep adding, stay busy, and never meaningfully change.
Action to take: Define your current season in one sentence: “Right now, I’m in a gaining season for ______.” Then choose one maintenance rule for health and relationships, and one commitment to subtract for the next 30 days to protect your best hours for that priority. Keep it temporary, and notice how much easier follow-through and action become.
Want more? Click here to read my discussion with Jon Goodman.
Leading thought: Erin makes a sharp distinction most learners miss: consuming information is not the same as building skill. If you want to make a change, the real work is not consuming more content; it comes from contextualized practice and feedback. She also points out that improvement often requires unlearning first, because old habits and environments can quietly override new intentions. Mastery is less about being entertained and more about designing conditions for follow-through.
Action to take: Pick one skill you want to strengthen this coming quarter and reduce new inputs around it for two weeks. Instead, schedule three short practice reps you can take, and build in feedback, whether from a person, a rubric, or an AI role-play bot. Track what you adjust after each rep (not just what you learned).
Want more? Click here to read my discussion with Erin Green.
Life experience this quarter came in the form of exploring new places in the Carolinas.
We went to Appalachian Ski Mountain (pictured) for the first time and had a blast, as well as visited South Carolina a bit by checking out Charleston and Kiawah Island over the holidays.
I continue to support various causes through quarterly contribution, which is being tracked on this scorecard.
Funny enough, it would appear subtraction has made it into the zeitgeist for 2026. While procrastinating on editing this newsletter, I began listening to Chris Williamson on the latest The Diary of a CEO podcast. One of the first nuggets of advice Chris gives in the episode is, “In order to pick something up, you have to put something down.”
In other words, subtraction isn’t an aesthetic preference, but a capability power play. If you want to get better at something in 2026, you don’t necessarily need a better system. You just need room to practice, and room usually shows up the same way every time … by removing something first.
Before I close, I want to highlight three new releases from interviewees, past and present, that fit the moment particularly well:
- Jon Goodman’s Unhinged Habits comes out January 27, 2026. The book serves as a sharp reminder that intensity has its place, but that strategic subtraction is the real starting line.
- Nir Eyal’s latest book, Beyond Belief, is now available for pre-order as well, and let me tell you, it’s good! If you’ve been circling a change you “know” you want to make, but cannot seem to commit to, this one is aimed at the invisible assumptions that keep you stuck.
- And Cathy Heller’s Abundant Ever After is now out in trade paperback. If you’re recalibrating what “enough” feels like and want a more expansive relationship with ease and possibility, this is the book for you. It has a feminine, mystical slant, but even this old, skeptical dude found a way to enjoy the heck out of it.
- And, of course, if you’d like to have more fun in 2026, there’s The Fun Habit.
I hope that at least something in here, be it an idea or a takeaway, helps set up 2026 as your best year yet! One of my favorite things is being in your corner, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to do just that.
Sincerely,
Mike Rucker, Ph.D.