Kurt  0:07  
Mr. Houlihan, yep. Do you ever get to January after the first? Maybe, maybe it's the second or third. Maybe it's the eighth, ninth, 10th, maybe it's January six, seven. Okay. But do you ever get to one of those days where you just like you're exhausted, you're feeling like it's a slump, and you don't have that you're not anticipating things are coming up. It's like it's all over, and I'm just exhausted, and I just want to curl up and not do anything.

Tim Houlihan  0:43  
You mean, like, I don't have that same verve and vitality and that zip in my step that I have all throughout

Kurt  0:49  
the holidays, is that much very vitality. Yes, yes, that is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't that? And the idea that, you know, I'm it's winter, it's dark outside most of the time. Yeah, older Is there something structurally different about January than about December?

Tim Houlihan  1:15  
Yeah, and we have to be directing our comments toward our listeners in the northern hemisphere. Because if you're in Sydney right now, or in Perth or Melbourne, you're going, Dude, these are the longest light days of the year.

Kurt  1:28  
True, true. Sorry about that. We are very northern hemisphere centric here, but yeah, for us right since we don't live in the southern hemisphere, yeah.

Tim Houlihan  1:39  
So I would answer your question by saying, yes,

Kurt  1:44  
yeah, I think, I think there's something there. I don't necessarily have have research to do it, but we talk about, you know, people setting new year's resolutions and goals at the New Year and all this. But there's some aspect of that that there is, although it's a new year and it feels fresh, there's that fresh start. There's also this. We've just come through a highly emotional, intensive period for many people, around the holidays, new year's Christmas, if you celebrate that Hanukkah, if you celebrate that just the the end of the year, work components that are usually a flurry of activity, and there's this sense of like it's done now. The the horizon that we're looking out to is much longer where, yeah, it's a fresh start, but it's the full year of 2026 coming up. Yeah, it is no longer. This is happening next week, next month,

Tim Houlihan  2:53  
and yet, like, the difference between December 27 and January, 3 is one week. It's seven days. And what's the difference between those seven days? And I think it has to do with these artifacts. Artificial dates that they make a difference for us. You know, Katie milkman's work on the that fresh start heuristic, this idea of, I will start my workout routine on Monday, or I will start it on my birthday, or I'll start it on Labor Day, or

Kurt  3:18  
name the day. But January 1, the New Year is one of the best fresh starts.

Tim Houlihan  3:24  
It really is. But I think at the same time, there's also something to be said about just our neurological and biological setup, where it's not a bad thing to get through all this and then sort of rusticate a little bit. And by the way, I'm not talking about months. We're not bears sleeping in the woods, but I do think that there might be something about taking a day or two to invest some time in thinking about where have I been, right? This is a great time to before you set the goals to reflect and to have a little bit of self reflection and self awareness as to where, where have I been? What does it mean

Kurt  4:03  
to me? I will even take you further. I don't think it's just a day or two. I think it can be a week or two weeks. I think there is this, this period of like, hey, let's just calm. I don't need to jump into first quarter planning and year long planning get really I need to, you know, take a take a deep breath. We've come through the holidays. I need to just let my body regenerate. But more importantly, my my brain, as I said that, or what you said on this reflection. Aspect, I think is key. There is that ability for us that we often forego to reflect, and we do it at the end of the year, sometimes too. But I think at the beginning of the new year is a really good time to do that. And I think that our bodies naturally kind of do this like all right, we we. We were hyped, hyped, hype. It's like, at the you know, you're, you're hyped for a game, you're playing, playing, playing, and then the game is over, and it's like, your body, there's a there's a change in your body, all those pains that you were able to ignore, all of that. It's like, oh, they're back, and then you have to address them.

Tim Houlihan  5:17  
So, yeah, I I'm aware of the fact that businesses need to keep going, and that if you work in a corporate environment, there's going to be new initiatives, there's going to be setting big first quarter objectives, there's going to be national sales meetings, there's going to be a whole variety of things that are kicking off the first of the year, and at the same time, I think that it's worth actually kind of going okay, maybe, maybe I just need to be a little bit self reflective about how I'm going to participate in all this and about how I want, how I want to show up.

Kurt  5:57  
I think leaders need to be aware of that for their employees, particularly, we tend to look at the world from our own viewpoint.

Tim Houlihan  6:09  
Why would we do that?

Kurt  6:12  
This is how I show up, and therefore everybody else is similar to me, right? We, as much as we like to think we are empathetic and we can put ourselves in other people's shoes. We don't do a good job of that, and leaders oftentimes are have a much more of a go, go, go personality, and not realizing that many of their employees may not have that they may need more of that downtime, more of that reflection time to come back and be ready to go and hit the things. And maybe it isn't two weeks, maybe it is just a few days, but understand that there is that that refresh that people need to have. We talk about in the work that we do with our behavior, shift our change components and kind of the journaling and our planners and different pieces of that that people need to do, what we call brain breaks throughout the day. And I think there is also a larger component of that. And so there's really good research that shows like, Look, if even just a five minute break every 90 minutes, or a 15 minute break during the day, where you disengage your brain from what it was doing and hard thinking, to give it a reprise, to give it this a moment, to shift gears, Slow down, allow that to recharge, reinvigorate yourself, and you come back much better. And I think the same thing can be happening on an annual basis. It just happens on a little bigger scale, so you need a larger brain break.

Tim Houlihan  7:54  
Well, I'd also add that managers, leaders and organizations can help uh, deal with that down that sort of down slope side in energy by also giving people that irrational thing of looking forward to something right? Because it's easy to to get ramped up in energy as we're heading into the holidays, we're heading end into the end of the quarter, which isn't going to happen for three months from January 1, but you can create some artificial milestones to be targeting, to say, let's work on getting this done in this particular period of time. And the shorter the timeframe, the better. Like, let's actually carve out some some milestone goals that contribute to our Keystone goals, so that we can actually make some progress and start to feel good about what we're doing, get that energy back

Kurt  8:47  
up right after we give our people their downtime to be able to do I think you're bringing up a really good point, though. So there is this aspect again, January is fundamentally different than December. It's a new year again, demarcation in the big scheme of the world, like, why is January one, the New Year's versus July 18, or whatever it is. But it is, right? I mean, it would make more sense if it was December 21 right? The, you know, after the ones that's not the that's not the case. This facet, though, I think there is a fundamental difference, because, as you said, we don't have there aren't those, you know, major holidays that are readily there. Valentine's Day comes in February, you know. But that's a different thing, right? And we don't have something to look forward to as much. Again, northern hemisphere folks, our days are shorter. You know, in December it was like, we're getting into it. Now, it's just the grind. It's like, Oh my God. It's like, still dark at five o'clock. I, you know, I just feels like it's lasted for a long time. You get sad, right? You know, you get that depressed from some of that component of not having that sunshine, and different pieces of that you have fundamentally different. So your idea of like, what can we do to give people show them progress and allow them to meet their needs in in shorter chunks, I think, is really on target, and

Tim Houlihan  10:31  
get some some energy from some quick wins.

Kurt  10:35  
Yeah, right, yeah. That starts. I mean, we've talked about this from an incentive perspective all the time for years that is, that is amazingly successful, is start quick, because you get people starting quick, and then they're going so again, give your people time to recharge. The day at two, whatever. Make sure you're not just going, you know, from holidays rushing to, you know, q1 planning, or, you know, doing this. But then once you do that, it's like, All right, let's do something that we can get people off to a quick start. They've come back. They've had that downtime. They're refreshed. Now give them something to hope for, something to strive for something to go after and show that progress and get a quick quick right?

Tim Houlihan  11:21  
Because we know the research absolutely supports this idea that one that if you get started faster, you're much more likely to hit your goals. Now, who knows what's going to happen throughout the quarter or the first six months of the whole year? It there's ambiguity, uncertainty, all that, however, Getting Started fast can absolutely make the difference. Okay, anything else?

Kurt  11:42  
Kurt, I think that's that kind of wraps it up for me. I think for many people, if you want to get some of this information you know, into your organization and work with Tim or me to help you figure out a way of doing this or providing some workshops to help people in that process. We are definitely available, and you can, you can just ping us, and we'll, we'll pick up the phone

Tim Houlihan  12:11  
absolutely and so hopefully you'll use some of these cool ideas to help you and your team this week as you go out and find your groove. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai