I owe you an apology...

Hi friend,

I owe you an apology - it's been a month since I last sent anything.

I've been working on some personal goals I set for myself earlier this year, and I needed to put my head down for a bit. But I'm back, and there's something I want to share with you because the timing actually matters here.

We're in December now.
Most people are already mentally checked out.
They're thinking, "I'll get serious in January" or "let me just enjoy the holidays first."

But here's what most people don't understand about how your brain actually works.

The Cold Start Problem

There's a concept in psychology and neuroscience called the "cold start problem." It originally comes from tech, but it applies perfectly to your brain and behavior.

When you stop doing something - like working toward your goals - your brain doesn't just pause and wait for you to press play again. It recalibrates. It adjusts to the new normal of not doing that thing.

Think about it: you spend all of December in rest mode. You're eating more, moving less, staying up late, sleeping in. Your brain is building new neural pathways around this lifestyle.

When January 1st hits, you're not starting fresh. You're starting cold. You have to overcome the inertia of a month spent training your brain to do the opposite of what you want.

The research backs this up. Studies on habit formation show that your brain creates neural pathways through repetition. The basal ganglia, a region in your brain, handles this process - when you first learn something new, it requires active focus and attention from areas of the prefrontal cortex, but as you repeatedly perform a behavior, control shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the dorsal striatum, making it more automatic.

Here's the problem: this process works in both directions. If you spend December building habits of inactivity, you're literally wiring your brain to prefer that state.

The Truth About "21 Days"

You've probably heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit.

That's complete fiction.

The myth comes from a 1960 book by a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz who noticed his patients took about 21 days to get used to their new appearance after surgery. Somehow, this observation about adjusting to a new nose became "scientific proof" that habits form in 21 days.

The actual research tells a very different story.

A study on habit creation found that habits developed in a range of 18 to 254 days, with participants reporting taking an average of about 66 days to reliably incorporate one of three new daily activities - eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a bottle of water with lunch, or running for 15 minutes before dinner.

More recent research is even more revealing. A systematic review of more than 2,600 participants found that new habits can begin forming within about two months (median of 59-66 days) but can take up to 335 days to establish.

Let me translate what this means for you: if you're thinking "I'll start in January and have my life together by February," you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Real change takes months, not weeks.

But here's the flip side of that coin: the sooner you start, the sooner those months pass.

Your Brain on Momentum

There's something fascinating that happens in your brain when you build momentum versus when you start cold.

Neuroscientists at MIT discovered that as habits form, the brain creates what they call "chunking" patterns - neural activity that marks the beginning and end of a behavioral sequence, essentially packaging multiple actions into a single automatic unit.

It's like your brain sets up bookmarks for "this is the thing I do now."

When you have momentum, these neural bookmarks are already in place. Your brain recognizes the pattern. Getting started doesn't require the same cognitive load because the pathways are already established.

When you start cold in January, you're asking your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain responsible for decision-making and willpower - to do all the heavy lifting. Initially, forming a habit requires conscious effort and recruits the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking, decision-making, and self-regulation.

This is why January resolutions fail at such high rates.

You're trying to start multiple new behaviors simultaneously, all requiring maximum willpower, at a time when your brain is recovering from holiday mode.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Let's talk about what actually happens when people wait until January.

Research shows that many employees face a "post-holiday slump" characterized by stress, fatigue, and difficulty focusing, which leads to decreased productivity at the start of January.

Around 26% of people say January is their least productive month, with December a close second at 14%.

Think about what this means: the two months everyone thinks are about "winding down" and "fresh starts" are actually the least productive months of the year for most people.

Meanwhile, the people who understand how this actually works? They're doing the opposite. They're using December to build momentum so they enter January already running.

The Real Timeline

So if you start today - December 2nd - here's what's actually possible:

By January 1st, you'll have roughly 30 days of practice. You won't have a fully formed habit yet (remember, that takes 60+ days on average), but you'll be well into the formation process.

Daily ratings of the subjective automaticity of a behavior showed an initial acceleration that slowed to a plateau after an average of 66 days, and missing the occasional opportunity to perform the behavior did not seriously impair the habit formation process.

This means that by the time everyone else is making their resolutions, you're already a third of the way through the habit formation process. You're past the hardest part - the initial resistance.

By February 1st, you'll have 60 days. At this point, you're approaching the average timeframe for habit automaticity. What felt difficult in early December now feels normal.

By March 1st, you'll have 90 days. You're now beyond the average formation time for most habits. The behavior is automatic. You don't have to think about it anymore.

Compare that to the person who starts on January 1st. By March 1st, they're only 60 days in - right where you were on February 1st.

You're an entire month ahead.

The Compounding Effect

But it's not just about being ahead. It's about the compounding nature of consistency.

As we repeat behaviors, the basal ganglia help create neural pathways that become increasingly efficient over time, and the more we engage in a new behavior, the stronger and more efficient these new neural pathways become.

This is crucial to understand: each day you practice a behavior doesn't just add one more day of experience. It strengthens the entire neural network associated with that behavior.

Day 30 is exponentially more effective than day 1 because of all the groundwork you've already laid.

When you start in December, you're not just getting a head start. You're building the foundation that makes everything else easier. You're creating the neural infrastructure that will support your goals all year.

What This Actually Looks Like

I'm not saying you need to work 12-hour days in December while everyone else is at holiday parties. That's not sustainable, and it's not what I'm suggesting.

What I'm saying is: pick one thing.

Maybe it's 30 minutes of focused work on your most important project. Maybe it's one daily action that moves you toward your biggest goal. Maybe it's a single habit you've been meaning to build.

Commit to it every day in December.

That's it. Not five things. Not a complete life overhaul. One thing, consistently, for 30 days.

By the time January arrives, you'll have something everyone else will spend the first month of the year trying to find: momentum.

And momentum changes everything. When we first learn a new behavior, the prefrontal cortex guides active decision making and conscious effort, but as we repeatedly perform the behavior, control shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the dorsal striatum, allowing us to perform familiar actions with reduced effort from the brain.

The Choice

Look, December 31st is coming whether you work toward your goals or not. The calendar doesn't care about your plans.

The only variable you control is who you'll be when that day arrives.

You can be someone who enjoyed the holidays and then has to start from scratch in January, fighting against a brain that's been trained for a month to be inactive.

Or you can be someone who enjoyed the holidays and built momentum, someone who enters the new year with neural pathways already forming, with habits already taking shape, with proof that you're serious about what you want.

The choice seems obvious to me. But I'm curious what you think.

Until Next Monday
Lorenc - Founder of Success Skill