Do you know what I love most about the beginning of the year? The fact that there’s no need to rush in. Sure, the new calendar year started last month. But the new lunar year just started, and the astrological new year doesn’t start until next month. Which feels like permission to take our time setting up for the year ahead.
And I don’t mind if I do. Take my time.
I haven’t always been this way. In fact, I’m not actually this way. I have an impatient part (I call her little-miss-impatient). She has a somewhat unhealthy relationship with time in that she craves urgency. Which is why she is absolutely JAZZED that the year of the fire horse suggests a year of “fast & furious.” Fire horse, let’s goooooooo!
But I do know better, and it felt really good starting slow this year. Which got me thinking about the paradox of time: that we have to go slow to go fast.
As we move from a year of shedding to a year of momentum, I wonder if we can afford to do anything else except start slow.
What Does That Even Mean
The thing about a paradox is that, at first glance, it sounds contradictory. How can it be possible that to go fast, you have to go slow?
The Winter Olympics give us a glimpse of what this looks like for some of the top athletes in the world. They teach us that even with innate talent, the process of being the best is a slow one. Spending years, even decades, developing their skills and honing their craft; that is the slow part. But once they make it to the world stage, everything happens so fast!
Take Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American freestyle skier, who took the 2026 Winter Olympics by storm. She took home 3 medals and in doing so became the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history. She described her experience of competing in the Olympics as: “years of work, effort, dedication, fear, despair, ecstasy, and hope all in 30 seconds.”
She went slowly to go fast.
How to Go Slow
If the year of the fire horse is going to be fast, let’s start slow.
Not lethargic-slow. Not lazy-slow.
Strategic-slow. Like an athlete who knows that their years of work, effort, dedication, fear, despair, ecstasy, and hope are going to pay off all at once.
And here’s the secret to going slow: you can’t be a magical thinker about time.
Magical thinking can look like: the propensity to run late, the trend toward procrastination, or consistently underestimating how long things will take.
It can also look like: getting sucked into the scroll on social media, avoiding things that have to get done, or never quite finding focus during the day.
Magical thinking sounds harmless, but it can be a form of self-sabotage. And if things are about to get fast, the best way to go slow is to experiment with some smarter habits around time.
Smarter Habits
Habits are the ultimate way to go slow to go fast. Committing to them can feel insanely slow, but once they start compounding, they build momentum fast.
Here are a few ideas for smarter habits around:
🤷🏼♀️If you have no idea where your time goes: calendarize everything. Every task, every commitment, travel time, everything. If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist. To make this a habit, carve out time every morning to review and make sure everything’s on there, and time at the end of the day to look at the next day.
🤦🏼♀️If you tend to run late or otherwise underestimate how long things take you: give yourself 1.5x the time you think it will take. Factor it into every day.
🙅🏼♀️ If you have a propensity to procrastinate: do one thing you’ve been avoiding, every single day. Just one. Bonus points if you build in accountability.
🙆🏼♀️ If you need to find more time in your day: try energy blocking. Identify your highest energy window and protect it for your most important work. Every day.
Pick one. Try it for 21 days. Go slow, to go fast.
One thing I am choosing to believe in the year of the fire horse is that time is on my side.
I hope you will too!
Which one of these are you going to try? And what would you add? Drop it in the comments or swing by the habit club on Friday!
