Khalid J Hosein

Ever dreamt of hitting the reset button on life? Instead, you find yourself constantly ruminating on the idea without actually making any progress?

Whether you realize it or not, you’re constantly getting and making fresh starts — tasks, life systems, workflows, etc. Here are some examples from my own life:

• Over the years, I moved away from actively buying and listening to CDs, to listening to music almost exclusively via streaming services. If you had asked anyone who knew me well what my prized possession was, they would have told you “his music collection (CDs)”. The epiphany struck me about a year ago that this transition had fully occurred and now I’m actually contemplating getting rid of the collection.

• Over time, I stopped using a desktop computer I had built from scratch many years ago. I had configured it to the hilt, replete with custom workflows, my personally curated set of software, and a filing system that I had refined to the point of never having to search for files. The necessary data on the desktop was copied up to cloud storage services, or via sneakernet to a laptop; everything else was practically abandoned, despite some tepid dreams of someday sorting through it to ensure I got what I needed. Oh yeah, I still have that desktop and that dream. The reality is that as more time passes by, the actual need for any of that data is slipping to zero.

• My work and computer needs have shifted and so have my computers. My main home computer OS/machine has gone from Windows desktops to MacBooks, and now it’s a Chromebook.

• Work: I’ve been in IT for over 2 decades and my job immediately prior to becoming a cloud consultant was a traditional IT operations-type gig. I did not make any active decision that I was about to abandon a role that I had had for well over 10 years, but that was the bottom line. Only after having been immersed in pure cloud computing work for a few years did I have the realization that I wasn’t going back.

And here are a handful more that many people go through:

• moving to a new home or city
• switching doctors
• changing jobs or roles
• having children
• becoming empty-nesters (children leaving home)
• getting married or divorced

All of these changes require effort, none of which happens overnight, but as long as they’re not deemed monumental, we tackle them as a matter of course.

Many of us often find ourselves contemplating a significant ‘fresh start’ — but those tend to be of the grandiose, drastic and wholesale variety. Yet we’re starting over on smaller scales all the time, usually without realizing or doing it without labeling it ‘starting over’.

The reality is, those grand-scale transformations rarely materialize, as they seem akin to conquering insurmountable mountains.

Stop yearning for a sweeping overhaul. Instead, consciously and intentionally identify the specific areas in your life that genuinely need improvement and work on them at a gradual, measured pace.