Doing a Hard Reset: A Stoic Guide to Instant and Lasting Change
The best time was yesterday, the second best time is today
Recently, I saw an Instagram post that hit me like a truck.
It was so concise and powerful that I instantly shared it with 5 of my closest people—the information was too important to hang onto.
You can check the post here.
For those of you not interested in clicking out of the newsletter, here’s the TLDR:
How to do a hard reset on your life before 2026
Do the ‘wheel of life’ exercise
Fix your sleep habits (seriously)
Declutter your physical and digital space
Create a ‘stop doing’ list
Curate your information diet
Close your open loops
Reclaim your mornings
The post was essentially a series of actionable and effective steps for someone to take right now to significantly improve the quality of their life and relationships.
To illustrate the power of the post, I decided to put it into practice.
Using myself as the subject.
I’m going to walk through each concept, explaining what it means, how I have been performing in that category, and how I plan to change it.
Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to be done at the end of 2026.
This can be done at any moment, and in fact should be reviewed and amended as consistently as possible.
Don’t get stuck on autopilot—question your own time and decision making.
Alright, enough preamble, let’s dive in…
1. The ‘wheel of life’ exercise
This one is a cool one to do.
I actually done this exercise with my girlfriend 4 months ago.
Basically you take 8 categories and you rate them out of 10. Then take the 2 things you are performing the worst at and make them your focus for the next period of time.
Here are our results from August:
And here are my results from this week when I redid the exercise:
Clearly, my relationship is great, family relationships are solid, and my career continues to be a strength—however, my physical and financial health still leave a lot to be desired.
So for the first 6 months of 2026, that is where I will set my sights.
Highest intentions will be centred around moving my body, feeling strong again, fixing my pains and spending equal time tightening my belt financially to set myself up for a more fruitful life.
2. Fix your sleep habits
The post referenced a tweet from Andrew Huberman, a very concise template for what is required to achieve optimal sleep.
Sleep is the ultimate force multiplier, the post said.
I thoroughly agree, but this year I have used sleep as a backstop, not a boost.
Basically, time in bed and sleep efficiency have been one of my stronger suits this year (as seen in the data shown by my Whoop device), but tbh, without prioritisation of sleep, my health would’ve declined much more rapidly.
Next year, I want to dial it in, make it a priority, and the force multiplier it can be.
A few very simple adjustments I can make:
No alcohol during the week (no exceptions)
Wake up at 6 am every morning (no exceptions)
Eat dinner much earlier every night (8 pm latest > no snacking)
No screen time 30 minutes before bed (reading, talking, stretching)
3. Declutter your physical and digital space
Clutter is the slow, silent killer of productivity and clarity.
Like a termite infestation eating away at the base of a perfectly healthy tree from the inside out before the inevitable and sudden collapse.
It’s there in the background just gnawing away.
The post asked me to pick one space to declutter—I selected my iCloud notes app and spent 2 hours of my flight to Hong Kong tidying/deleting/condensing.
It’s still not finished, but it feels a lot less messy.
A few other spaces that I have on my declutter target list:
Clothing
Social media
External hard drives
Drawers and cupboards
Subscriptions and accounts
Bookmark bar/bookmark folders
Emails → read/delete/unsubscribe
The goal with the decluttering is to be a bit ruthless.
Anything not playing an active role in your day-to-day life or that has not been used in the last six months IS clutter.
Bin it!
4. Create a ‘stop doing’ list
The post captures this idea perfectly, so I’ll refer to the original text to set this one up:
Everyone obsesses over what to add—new habits, new routines, new goals. But the fastest way forward is usually through subtraction.
Then the post poses a question that I think was the biggest holy shit moment I have experienced in a long time, and genuinely was not something I had thought about.
If a competent CEO got to run your life in 2026, what are the first things they would eliminate?
Mate, what a doozy!
That thought genuinely sent me! A proper out-of-body experience that has caused some serious reflection in the last couple of days.
I have lots of bad micro habits—the same ones we all have:
Vaping
Gambling
Drinking/snacking
Impulsive spending
But if I were a CEO, these would not be my biggest concerns.
Sure, these are all damaging in one way or another, but every successful person has all or some of these habits.
The 3 things that I believe a CEO would ask me to stop doing immediately would be:
Not planning for success
Not making time for deep work
Trying to do too much, i.e. not being obsessed
5. Curate your information diet
My information diet in recent years has been pretty good.
But it can always be better.
Over the last few years, I have read a lot, listened mostly to podcasts and audiobooks and have cut back on a lot of sports, TV and film.
More recently, I have started to over-indulge in podcasts and YouTube channels offering news bites and political spin.
The reality is that news podcasts and political commentary have become something of an entertainment escape. I have managed to convince myself that this form of entertainment is superior and have kinda given myself a pass.
Look, being informed is important, but skimming the surface is not enough.
In 2026, it is all about intention.
And going deeper!
There is a time to be entertained, and a time to gain knowledge.
Less political commentary, entertainment, and news bites. More audiobooks, long-form conversations and education.
6. Close your open loops
This is a biggie—a big big biggie!
When I sent the above post to my brother David, he reacted with a lot of emphasis to this specific section, and truthfully, so did I.
Because let’s be honest, our lives are mostly built of these things:
Bills we need to pay
Paperwork we need to file
Appointments we need to rebook
Text messages and emails not responded to
People we have been planning to catch up with
There is an infinite number of things that we keep open “just in case”.
So, here’s what you do…
Write a list of all these tidbits pulling at your attention. Then, line by line, go down the list and do one of these things:
Do it,
Schedule it, or
Let it go!
Cut the bullshit → close the loop!
7. Reclaim your mornings
My mornings used to be the most sacred thing to me.
Get up early, move slowly, think deeply, and set myself up strong.
Life happens, priorities change, momentum shifts, and you do what you have to do to survive… and so I have.
But my mornings are too important to leave to chance.
So I am taking them back!
Nothing grandiose or Earth-shattering, just some simple steps that I know have the highest ROI from any actions I might do in a day.
Wake up at 6 am
Start writing straight away
Don’t drink coffee in the first hour
No social media or phone time until coffee
And that’s it.
Thanks for tuning in, gang. Good luck with your reset, enjoy the rest of your 2025, and I’ll be back next week with a bit of a self-reflection of 2025 and a vision for 2026.
With gratitude,
SAV
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