Between Christmas and New Year’s, I deliberately slow things down. Not to rest for the sake of resting, but to observe. When the noise drops, you can actually see what’s been happening all year. What only worked because I was white-knuckling it. Where moving fast created more work later. Which patterns kept repeating, even when the intention was to change them. I’ve learned that this window isn’t for ambition. It’s for pattern recognition. In biology, you understand a system better when you stop intervening and let it reveal itself. That’s how we work at @GetTinyHealth – we don’t chase surface-level symptoms, we look for what’s driving them underneath. Leadership isn’t that different. Constant action can hide fragility while stillness shows you where the system is strong, and where it’s brittle. Earlier this year, we applied that thinking internally. At our annual offsite, we ran a “breaking patterns” workshop – huge thanks to @Evanish, founder and CEO of @Get_Lighthouse, for helping facilitate the session. As part of the session, we watched a short clip from CEO coach @jerrycolonna. The clip was deeply impactful, creating a pause that made it easier to recognize patterns we’d all been moving through. We asked questions like: 🔍 What situations keep showing up? 🧩 How might I be contributing to the system, not as the sole cause, but as part of it? 🔁 Which responses are familiar because they’ve worked before – even if they’re no longer serving us? The patterns people named were honest. Taking over when things get hard. Going quiet when there’s tension. The goal wasn’t behavior change on the spot. It was to create a shared language. So that later, under pressure, we can name what’s happening and interrupt it together. That experience reinforced something I’ve come to trust: clarity comes before change. So at the end of the year, I reduce inputs. No new projects, or big declarations. Fewer meetings and more walking 🚶‍♀️. Rereading old notes instead of consuming new ideas. Spending time with my kids without multitasking or checking my phone. Letting things slow down enough to actually see what’s been true. The questions I’m asking aren’t “What do I want next year?” They’re messier. Where did speed cost us time? What systems required heroics to function? What patterns am I ready to stop repeating? Those answers don’t arrive loudly but they’re far more useful than any list of goals. So I don’t start the year by pushing forward, I start by choosing a different way to begin. 🌱