January 2026 Closed Out: What Held, and Three Experiments That Didn't
Four days ago I graded my January commitments while there was still time to act on the grades. That was the mid-course report card. This is the other half: the month is closed, the numbers are final, and I want to look at the experiments I ran alongside those commitments, because that’s where most of the failures were.
I’m not repeating the letter grades here. The short version is that the commitments mostly held, and the extra habits I bolted on mostly didn’t. That gap is what this post is about.
The final numbers
| Commitment | Final result |
|---|---|
| Weekend boundaries | One Saturday worked, for an actual production emergency |
| Being present | Better than before, still drifting mentally during family time |
| Writing daily | 31 posts in 31 days |
| AI project focus | Mostly held, still distracted by new model releases |
Weekend boundaries held
Apart from that one emergency, every weekend was for family (I still glanced at Slack more than I should). The kids noticed. My wife noticed. I noticed. That’s a better measure than any tracker. I described how this started in The Weekend I Stopped Answering Slack. It stays in February.
Being present: mixed
I said on the 27th that this is harder than it looks because there’s no object to put away, and four more days didn’t change that. I still catch myself thinking about work while I’m sitting with the kids. I notice the drift sooner than I did on the 1st, which is the only progress I can honestly claim, and this one is going to be a long project.
Writing daily: done
Some posts were technical, some personal, some short, some long. The consistency mattered more than any single post. Writing every day clarified my thinking on several topics, mostly because a daily deadline doesn’t leave room to keep a thought half-formed. Being more open in my writing also felt liberating: less polished advice, more of what actually happened, including the parts that didn’t go well. I explained why I still bother in Why I Still Blog in 2026.
AI project focus: mostly held
I turned down projects that didn’t fit and kept my work centred on Azure OpenAI and Microsoft Fabric. Where I slipped was the same place as always: new model releases still pulled me away from the work in front of me, which is an old habit. Curiosity is part of the job, but the commitment was depth over breadth, and every hour spent on a launch is an hour not spent getting better at the tools I actually deliver with.
Three experiments that didn’t stick
Alongside the commitments, I tried three habits that productivity advice tends to treat as universal. All three failed for me this month.
Meditation. I tried it for a week and struggled with it. I’m not writing it off. The thing it’s meant to help with, being present, is exactly my weakest result above, which is why it’s still on February’s list in a different form: five minutes a day, small enough that I can’t skip it.
Time-blocking. I tried batching work into fixed blocks. It didn’t stick. My read is that a rigid calendar is fragile when the work itself is unpredictable, but one month isn’t enough evidence to say why it failed, only that it did. For February I’m not replacing it; protecting weekends is the only calendar rule I’m keeping.
5 AM starts. I tried waking at 5 AM. My body said no. I’m not going to fight that one. A habit that depends on overriding sleep is a habit I’ll abandon the first busy week, so it isn’t worth building. Nothing replaces it in February: the five minutes of meditation goes wherever the day has room, not at a fixed early hour.
Why the subtractions won
The pattern across all three experiments: they were additions. Each one asked for new time or new willpower on top of everything else. What held were subtractions: stop working weekends, stop taking projects that don’t fit. The one addition that held, daily writing, had what the others lacked: a hard daily deadline and a public record, so a missed day was visible. Meditation, time-blocking and 5 AM starts had neither. Saying no to something is a single decision. Adding a habit is a decision you have to remake every day.
That’s why the fixed boundaries made life easier rather than harder. “Do I work this Saturday?” stopped being a question I had to answer each week. Turning down two consulting gigs worked the same way: one no, and the question was closed. Presence is the only commitment I couldn’t turn into a rule. Weekends became a yes/no decision. Presence has to be chosen again every time I sit down with the kids.
February, kept short
The report card already set three specific goals for February: five minutes of meditation a day, a weekly phones-away family activity and a monthly no-tech day. The list below is the wider view of what I’m continuing, starting and stopping:
- Continue: weekend boundaries, daily writing, being selective with work.
- Start: the three report-card goals (five minutes of meditation daily, a weekly phones-away family activity, a monthly no-tech day).
- Stop: feeling guilty about what I’m not doing.
- Focus: being present, not just productive.
The “stop” line is the one I most need. A month of commitments makes it easy to keep a running list of everything I’m falling short on, and that guilt eats the same attention I’m trying to give my family.
Closing the month
January was good, not perfect. I made progress on what matters and there’s still work to do.
If you’re doing your own January review this weekend, I’d suggest one thing: split your results into what you stopped doing and what you tried to add. My guess is the subtractions held up better, and any addition that survived had something forcing it, such as a deadline or an audience. If that’s true for you too, February’s plan should probably have more subtractions and fewer new habits without one.
Here’s to February.