You Have 121 Days Left and You've Already Quit
You Have 121 Days Left and You've Already Quit
There are 121 days between today and December 31st.
That's a third of the year. It's also a full business quarter with a month thrown in on top, which is the amount of time most companies expect to do something meaningful in.
And a lot of people wrote it off yesterday.
Not out loud. Nobody announces it. They just look at where they are against what they said in January, do some quiet arithmetic, and decide the year got away from them. Then they start thinking about next year.
I've watched it happen for years in sales. Somebody's behind on quota in September, and instead of running at it they start prepping for next year's territory. The quota isn't gone. They've decided it is, which produces the same result with less effort.
The money version
Jana has a version of this she owned up to on the recording, and it's about money.
It starts around Halloween. Then Thanksgiving. Then she's coasting into Christmas, and then it's tax time, and somewhere in that stretch she stops trying to make money and starts trying to manage what's going out.
Her words: the older I get, the more Christmas vacation seeps into Thanksgiving, which seeps into Halloween.
That's not a budget problem. Managing expenses is a fine thing to do in December. But it's a different mode than creating, and once you're in it, you're in it until January, and January is when everybody else is also starting.
The thirds
Here's the arithmetic that changed how I look at September.
Divide the year in thirds and you get four months. Divide it in fourths and you get three.
We're at the start of the last third. Somehow that reads as almost over.
I think it's because we're on the downhill side of the number 6, and the brain treats past-halfway as basically done. But a third of anything is a lot. If somebody offered you a third more of anything you cared about, you'd take it without a conversation.
You've got a third of 2026 sitting there and you're about to spend it thinking about 2027.
The back-to-school thing
Jana still runs on a school calendar and I don't think she's ever going to stop.
For her this isn't the end of anything. It's new-year energy. Buy the supplies, get the clothes, meet the new teacher. September is a beginning and she has never once experienced it otherwise.
I remember it slightly differently, mostly as the year everybody else got new jeans and I didn't.
But she's right about the energy and there's no reason it should belong to eleven-year-olds. If a fresh notebook and a real start feel available in September, that's a resource sitting there for free.
Don't wait for January
Here's the part I'd actually do something with.
People start thinking about New Year's resolutions in October. They think about them all through November and December, and then they start on January 1st with everybody else, and by February most of it's gone.
Start now instead.
Do the thing for the last third of this year and by January 1st you're not resolving anything. You're already doing it, and you've got four months of evidence behind you, and the thing you were going to resolve to do is just how you operate now.
Jana put it better than I did. I've already broken the ceiling and now it's my new floor.
That's the whole argument for starting in September. Not that you'll finish the year strong, though you might. That you'll start next year from somewhere higher than the place everybody else is starting from.
The formula
Four questions. Four minutes. Run them on the last third of the year rather than on a day.
What do I want to experience? How do I want to grow? How do I want to contribute? How lucky am I?
The first one does most of the work here, because coasting isn't a discipline failure. It's what happens when you stop having a heading. People quit in September because they're looking at what didn't get done instead of at what they want, and it's very hard to run at something you haven't named.
Ask anybody in any field where you're trying to get to and they'll ask you the same thing first. A GPS asks. A waiter asks. The question is not complicated and most people go months without answering it.
Living Lucky® Practice
The Last Third
Four questions, aimed at what's left of the year instead of at a day. Answer them for these four months only. Print it and put it where you'll see it in November.
01 What do I want to experience before December 31st?
Not a task list. What you want the last third of this year to have been like.
02 How do I want to grow in these four months?
What would you need to get better at for the answer above to actually happen?
03 How do I want to contribute?
Who gets something from you between now and the end of the year, and what is it?
04 How lucky am I?
List what you already have to work with. People, skills, time, money, access. You can't build from nothing, so this is the inventory.
05 One piece of it I'm doing today.
Today. Not Monday, not the first of the month.
Jana will tell you she's watched this work in three days. She's seen people come back in thirty saying their whole situation changed, and she's got a longer list of those than I do because she's been running it longer.
I'd set your expectations somewhere more boring than that. What I've seen reliably is that people who know what they're aiming at in September behave differently in October, and the difference compounds. That's less exciting and it's what I'd bet on.
The Living Lucky® Practice
Exercise: answer the four questions about the last third of 2026 specifically. Not your life. Just these 121 days.
Reflection question: what did I decide about this year that I decided too early?
Journal prompt: if December 31st went well, what happened between now and then?
Action: pick the one thing from your answer and do a piece of it today. Today, not Monday.
Frequently asked questions
What is the September slump?
The tendency to quietly stop working toward annual goals once September arrives, on the reasoning that the year is nearly over. It's common in sales, where people behind on quota shift focus to next year, and it shows up in personal goals the same way.
How much of the year is actually left in September?
A third. Four months, which is also a full business quarter plus a month. As of September 2nd there are 121 days remaining, which is more time than most people have ever needed to change something that mattered.
Why start a goal now instead of January 1st?
Because starting in September means arriving at January already doing it, with four months of evidence behind you. People who wait spend October through December thinking about it, which is a lot of thinking with nothing to show.
What are the four questions?
What do I want to experience, how do I want to grow, how do I want to contribute, and how lucky am I. Four minutes. They work on a day, on a meeting, or on the remaining third of a year.
Does the holiday season really affect momentum that much?
It can, and the shift is usually from creating to managing. Handling seasonal expenses is reasonable. The cost is when that becomes the only mode you're in for four months, since it tends to hold until January whether or not you meant it to.
Is it too late to hit my 2026 goals?
Depends on the goal, and it's worth answering honestly rather than optimistically. Some targets genuinely need twelve months. Plenty of them need ninety days and a decision, and most people never test which kind they're holding.
What we actually did with the first four minutes
We could not say "fresh start reset."
It kept coming out as the fresh fart reset. Repeatedly. From both of us, in turn, with increasing confidence and no improvement whatsoever. That's four minutes of a nine-minute recording and I'd call it a good use of a Wednesday.
Then we spent the other five talking about a third of a year that most people had already given up on the day before.
You've got 121 days. Go pick something.
We Create Our Luck®.
We went deeper on this on the Living Lucky® Podcast, Season 11, Episode 29.
