In 2026, I need to ditch too many calls. It is not that the calls are bad in themselves, but because the volume has crept up to a point where they crowd out thinking time. The kind of slow, slightly uncomfortable reflection time that actually leads to good decisions. I am now ready to admit, publicly and without shame, that I am, in fact, bad at the ‘group chat’. I don’t process well in that format. I don’t think clearly while Slack messages stack up and Zoom squares flicker. What I need instead is to leave most of them, seek out one opinion at a time, and then do the slightly harder work of separating signal from noise on my own.

This is not an anti-people stance. It’s the opposite. One-on-one conversations are almost always better: more honest, more nuanced, less performative. People say what they actually think, rather than what fits the temperature of the room or the dominant voice on the call. You can interrogate ideas properly, follow a thread to its end, and notice when something doesn’t quite add up. Then, once you’ve gathered the strong signals, you can step back and do the synthesis work that group settings often pretend to do but rarely manage. 

A big part of this general shift in habits is also about closing loops. Everything now moves at a velocity that, between the open tabs, the constant notifications, and the sheer number of parallel workstreams, there is almost nothing like the feeling of actually completing something. Things just linger. Half-decisions, draft ideas, “we’ll come back to this” notes. You’re always busy, but rarely finished. I miss finished. I miss the clarity that comes from knowing something is done, not just temporarily parked.

Closing loops sounds boring, but it’s quietly transformative. It means deciding instead of deferring, shipping instead of polishing forever, and accepting “good enough” more often than feels comfortable. It also means saying no, explicitly, rather than letting things die slowly in shared folders. There is a deep psychological relief in completion, and I want more of that. One to pursue properly in 2026, but also one that starts now, in small, deliberate ways.

Alongside this, Joan is also going to get a room next year where we actually make stuff. A physical space, with tools, materials, and the implicit permission to get our hands dirty. This matters more than it sounds. Making things changes how you think. It collapses the distance between idea and reality. You learn faster because reality answers back immediately. And frankly, it’s why all Joans joined in the first place: to build, to experiment, to create things that didn’t exist before, not just to talk about them endlessly. And yes, lots of this will probably involve AI.

We’ve already started playing around with the right tools and learning from the right experts. There’s momentum there. But now we need to take the plunge and start making more stuff properly, and playing around with it as much as possible. Less reverence, more tinkering. Less planning theatre, more prototypes that might fail but will definitely teach us something. The goal isn’t perfection: it’s fluency. You only get that by doing.

To our credit, we’re pretty good at knowledge sharing: mostly experts coming in to share knowledge with us, upskilling the agency on something like AI image generation or issues like the perimenopause we need to become more informed on fast. Like most people still in the industry, we are all curious, like learning, and are trying to build decent habits around swapping insights and resources. We’re also learning when to down tools and take a break before diving back in, which turns out to be a skill rather than an indulgence. Stepping away at the right moment often unlocks better thinking than pushing through exhaustion ever does. We just need to keep doing this, consistently, without turning it into another thing we over-optimise and then abandon.

Here comes the boring strategic point, inserted with a sigh: consistency really is everything when it comes to getting stuff done on a continual basis. Not intensity, not bursts of hero effort, not beautifully crafted plans that never quite survive contact with reality. Just showing up, doing the work, closing the loop, and doing it again. Over time, that compounds. It’s unglamorous, but it works.

So, in summary, the positive habits I want to double down on are clear enough. More signal, less noise. Closing loops instead of collecting loose ends. Making more stuff, in real space, with real tools. And, of course, the French exit on video calls: leaving quietly when the value has been extracted, without apology or unnecessary ceremony. If we can get better at these things, not perfectly but consistently, the rest will likely follow.