Homework Assignments

This picture was taken at my “Peak Performance.”

Here I am on Dec 28 in the no mans land between the excesses of the holidays and the austerity of January. Nothing especially good happens this week. Work is weird. Your body is recovering from the extra cheese, your home is heaving the heavy sigh of new toys, too much candy, piles of cardboard, passive aggressive relatives and leftovers that don’t really go together. The kids are probably coughing, and you have no idea where to put the re-gifted as seen on TV white elephant items you received this season. This might be one of my favorite weeks of the year if I’m honest.

It is the time when I get prepared for probably my most favorite thing to do, and that is convince myself that I will become an entirely different person than I have been for the last 40 years.

I buy a new planner & pens. (This is my favorite one. I’ve used it for 3 years now- it has a page for every day) I clean out the fridge and I start itching to put away the Christmas decorations. I start putting vegetables in the refrigerator again. I read cook books and open up my pinterest app.

Starting January 1st, I fully expect to become… a patient, serious, hyper-focused, impeccably organized, meal prepping, morning person who exudes joy, serenity, and gets enough protein.

I always try to “get started” the week before so that it feels “easy” on January first, and this should be and I pray actually is finally the year that I learn my lesson.

A brief example: On Tuesday this week, ready to “get started,” and feeling well rested from spending all of Christmas day on the couch watching Basketball and eating snacks, I woke up early before work, emptied the dishwasher, did skin care, brushed my teeth, wrote in my planner, meditated, went for a walk, made a healthy breakfast for me and my husband, and cleaned the house quite a bit. I finished a bunch of stuff at work, then I did strength training and took a shower on my lunch break. I put on an outfit, & makeup, and I made a healthy dinner full of protein and fiber for me and my husband. When I went to bed early… I read a book and I was so proud of myself until… I got really into my book… it’s a good one… and I stayed up until 1 am reading it (this is a very ME thing to do). I managed to screw up NIGHT ONE, and I didn’t even have the excuse of my phone being addictive. I was reading a PAPER book.

The next day? I slept in. I barely clocked into work on time. I had forgot to set up the coffee the night before. I did zero skin care, cleaning, planning, meditation. My muscles ached from lack of sleep and the workouts the day before. I was a zombie, and it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep at my desk.

As I contemplated this failure (it’s not even Jan 1 yet), I began to re-assess my goals…

Because what happens on January first for me, and practically everyone else in the entire world, is that, as I recently heard the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, say in a podcast interview, most of us try to set goals and habits to be what we would achieve at “Peak Performance,” and what we really need to do is ask ourselves, “what could I get done on my WORST day?” Don’t ask, what could I get done on a well-rested day after a 3-day weekend when you’re highly motivated and the kids are all out of the house because they’re spending the holidays with your ex?

Ask what you can get done after you stayed up all night until 1 am in your 40’s. Ask what you could get done if your kid was sick at school… again… Ask what you could get done if you had a heavy work week, a newborn, a family emergency, a kid with a science fair project due the very next day…

For example, my husband and I have been trying to get ourselves more into reading with some middling success (you might have noticed earlier that I was bragging about it on Tuesday). In pursuit of this goal, I bought a bunch of books at the Goodwill Book Store on our trip to Florida over Thanksgiving, and I am READY to become the kind of reader I used to be before I bought my first smart phone 14 years ago. I have actually finished an entire book in the Month of December, which I am very proud of, and I am on to the next in the series. I also plan to re-read Atomic Habits (which really is a fantastic book for anyone interested in transforming their life- in all seriousness- I read it last January and it has truly helped me achieve goals and change my life in positive ways).

So I say to my husband as we’re driving to a friend’s house last night, as I’m gushing about the book I finished in December and all the books I plan to read- “I’m going to make a rule of no screens for the first two hours of the day and the last two hours of the day so reading gets easier,” and he said, “I think I’m just going to try to be in bed by 10 with a book in my hand.”

GUYS. Do you know how infuriating it is to have a husband who’s obviously right about things sometimes? Honestly. This was not in the pre-nup.

I really believed for a few brief moments in the car on December 27th, that somehow in the year of our Lord 2024, I, a millenial mom, whose ENTIRE life is on my phone- my calendar, my email, my bank, the weather, and all maps of the world, was going to just not have that phone for FOUR of my waking hours. For Christ’s sake, I have a kid in elementary school that requires no less than 4 apps for school lunch money, progress reports, parent communication, and district announcements. I work from home and have 2 apps on my phone just for that. I work out daily with Apple Fitness+ and use an Apple Watch. I have apps for my tennis team, my daughter’s after school activities, and grocery delivery. love Spotify and Reality TV, listen to podcasts every day, and keep up with various groups of friends across the country (and even the globe) via social media and I genuinely thought I was going to avoid my phone between 6-8 AM and 8-10 pm indefinitely forever until the end of time.

Then my sensible handsome husband said, “nah…”

I wish I could tell you that that’s the only unreasonable thought I have had about the New Year but of course it isn’t.

I just laughed. I was thinking about “Peak Performance Leslie” and my husband was just thinking about what’s reasonable. I wonder who has a higher likelihood of success?

It’s not that I don’t believe I’m capable of great things.

I’ve put my mind to enough challenges that I know I can do what I really want to do, and I have also learned that the key to those successes was not in the outcome. It was in the small steps I took every day to achieve that outcome, but nobody talks about those. James Clear explains it by saying you will see the headline, “Man Loses 400 lbs” but you will never see the headline, “Man Eats Chicken and Salad for Lunch Today.”

A lot of people congratulated me when I graduated Summa Cum Laude. Nobody congratulated me when I finished a homework assignment, but finishing all those homework assignments is what it took to get my degree.

Homework assignments and chicken salad lunches are what it takes to live the life of your dreams. I talked about this recently on my instagram, as I looked back on 2023, which has been a pretty excellent year for me personally. I have taken 3 incredible vacations- two out of the country. I have checked off bucket list moments like going whale watching. I have stayed healthy, celebrated birthdays, holidays, my first wedding anniversary, and more. I’ve spent a lot of time with friends and family, gone to NBA games, parades, parties, the list goes on. Babies have been born. Life has been sweet, and all of it was due to the homework assignments and chicken salad lunches paying off. All that success and celebration was possible because of the small, seemingly insignificant, sometimes boring, unacknowledged and uncelebrated effort and work that me and my family put in every day. I’m incredibly grateful, but of course, as a human being, there’s still more dream to dream… and as cynical as I can be, the new year really excites me because it feels like we’re getting started on those dreams again.

Here’s what “Peak Performance” Leslie wants to achieve:

Because here’s who the real Leslie wants to be:

So here’s my list of homework assignments and chicken salads that I think I can achieve on my worst day, and plan to implement in 2024 in order to be who I want to be:

1. Open Google Docs on my computer or ipad & write one sentence every day.
2. Be in bed by 10 pm with a book in my hand every night (thanks husband).
3. Put on my sneakers every day.
4. Wear sunscreen every day.
5. Wash my face every night.
6. Track my spending in my budget spreadsheet daily.
7. Do the dishes, trash, & one load of laundry every day.

It’s not that you’ll never do more than this, or that you won’t improve on these “minimums.” It’s that you need to do your homework, and the homework is due when it’s due, not when it’s convenient, not when life is easy, not when you’re well-rested. Check in with me in 2025… and let’s see if I got all my homework done.

What’s your homework this year?