Forget January Resolutions: Why September Is The Real Fresh Start Month

It’s September. Have you locked in for the season?

Wait, wait, don’t run away – this isn’t about to turn into your least favorite TikTok challenge. (Although bless the hearts of everyone on TikTok who’s locking in right now – I appreciate their grim and desperate focus on personal fitness/“wellness” goals as a counterpoint to the public health chaos that RFK Jr has unleashed upon us.) 

Because while the Great Lock-In of 2025 represents a mass need for some kind (any kind!) of control in the face of rising inflation, a declining economy, AI slop, brainrot, and the general psychosis of the Trump administration, I did want to put in a strong plug for taking advantage of back-to-school season as an adult. 

March and September are the months that I tend to set my goals, plan my learning, schedule my annual checkups and have my come-to-Jesus moments about my progress. And I think these months make far more sense than January to do all of those things, both in terms of the calendar – spring and autumn equinoxes represent balance! – and in terms of our surroundings. September is crisp leaves, fresh figs, and new books and coats in the stores. January is post-holiday exhaustion, winter doldrums and nothing but potatoes for two more months. It’s a time to schlep through and carry on, not a time to try to improve yourself. 

So in January I’ll share soup recipes. And right now I’ll share a few of the reflection questions I use for my own personal back-to-school season. 

Back-to-School Reflection Questions

• What do I need to learn this year? 

  • I like to make this category about learning something that’s great for me but I’d rather avoid the hard work of doing: cultivating patience, learning German or making it all the way through James Joyce’s Ulysses. 

• What do I want to learn this year? 

  • I like to make this category about learning something that’s great for me and I’m excited to get into the hard work of doing, like weightlifting, learning a dance trend, or coming up with new go-to dinner recipes.  

• Do I need new school supplies?

  • As a kid these looked like new pencils and glue sticks and binders and books and shoes, and as an adult these tend to look like new computer programs and library books. It’s a lot less exciting than the kid version, which is why a related question I ask is: Or can I make do with what I already have?

• What may distract me from success? How can I plan ahead to prevent distractions?

  • I don’t know if you’ve noticed (lol) but it’s a lot easier to distract yourself than it is to marshall your concentration for learning anything new these days. Noticing that is half the battle and the other half is figuring out how to overcome specific triggers with specific systems. For example, I’m useless at learning anything after 9 p.m. That means I need to go to bed as early as possible, get up as early as possible, and block off my calendar in the morning for as much time as I can spare. It’s a lot of little steps, and taking the time to plan every single one of them out can mean the difference between success and failure. 

• What will success look like? How will I know if I need to pivot?

  • For my discrete goals (aka “I want to read Ulysess”), this is easy, because I can just set a hard deadline. However, most goals are a little more nuanced and the line between success and failure can be extremely thin. If I’m learning something new and I’m not sure if I’m succeeding or failing, that’s when I like to step back and figure out what success will look like to me (aka did I stay in form when it came time to break out that new dance trend at a wedding? Not, did I become a YouTube star off of it). I also like to ask myself whether or not I’m still learning, or just powering through. 

See you next month! Let me know what you’re learning this year!