Cut the Noise. Start 2026 Right (The Smarter Way!)

🏆 Welcome to This Week’s Profit First Accountant Newsletter!

🕐 Estimated Read Time: 5 Minutes

Hi Everyone,

Happy New Year! It's Stephen Edwards from Gro Profit First Accountants, and I'm so glad to be back with you for our first newsletter of 2026.

I took most of December off to recharge, and honestly, it was a much-needed break. As business owners, we often get so focused on the grind that we forget to step back and breathe. We're constantly pushing, hustling, and striving for more. But here's the thing: there's a time to go at it, and there's a time to relax. You'll know what season you're in, but the key is to make sure you have time for both. That's not weakness—that's wisdom.

This break gave me space to reflect, and I came across something really powerful that I want to share with you: a framework called reThink from Farnam Street and reMarkable. It's designed for end-of-year reflection and starting the year on your terms. This isn't your typical business plan template. This is about you personally—your time, what you've learned, your relationships, and your growth.

This Week's Key Topic: Cut Noise. See Patterns. Act Decisively.

The reThink framework is built on a simple but profound idea: behind every successful year lies a moment of honest reflection. This is where clarity emerges and patterns become visible.

As David Ogilvy said, "It is a good idea to start the year by writing down exactly what you want to accomplish, and end the year by measuring how much you have accomplished." But here's where most annual reviews fail—they add complexity. More goals, more tasks, more pressure. The reThink approach does the opposite. It strips away the noise so you can see what truly matters and eliminate what doesn't.

The framework combines Shane Parrish's thinking frameworks (forged in high-stakes intelligence work) with neuroscience-backed tools. The result is something practical: 13 carefully structured exercises that build on each other, helping you identify patterns and make conscious, decisive choices about your path forward.

Three Mental Models That Change Everything

What I found most valuable in this framework are three mental models that apply directly to business and life. Let me walk you through them.

Model 1: Easy Mode vs Hard Mode

Here's a question: Are you playing on hard mode or easy mode?

Consider a student preparing for exams. Cramming the night before is hard mode. Daily reviews with good sleep? That's easy mode. Same test, dramatically different outcomes. Yet we often default to hard mode without even realizing it.

Where are you playing on hard mode in your business? Maybe it's your cash flow management—are you scrambling at month-end or do you have systems that make it automatic? Maybe it's your team communication—are you constantly firefighting or do you have rhythms in place? The exercise here is to identify three areas where you're choosing the difficult path by default, then ask: what's my easy mode?

This ties directly to what I've been saying about making your business boring. Boring is easy mode. Predictable systems, consistent processes, automation—these are all easy mode. They require upfront work to build, but then they run on autopilot.

Model 2: The Inner Circle

Exceptional people understand something crucial: your environment shapes your thinking, ambitions, and ultimately your destiny. And nothing is more important to your environment than the people in it.

Research consistently shows little correlation between happiness and money, but strong correlation between happiness and relationship quality. Think about that. Your success metrics might be revenue targets and profit margins, but your actual wellbeing depends far more on who's in your corner.

The exercise asks you to list the five people who have the most presence in your daily life, then score them on five dimensions:

• Information quality: Do they expand your thinking with valuable insights?

• Growth catalyst: Do they challenge you to reach higher standards?

• Energy impact: Do interactions leave you energized or drained?

• Future alignment: Are they heading where you want to go?

• Values and ethics: Do their principles align with your aspirations?

The insight is powerful: every relationship carries its own energy. Some spark your growth while others quietly shape your limits. This isn't about being harsh or judgmental. It's about being intentional. Use these insights to strengthen relationships that elevate you and thoughtfully adjust those that don't

Model 3: Set the Rules

Here's something most people miss: automatic rules turn desired behaviors into default behaviors.

Some rules propel you toward goals—like committing to daily exercise or protecting your top 3 priorities. Others protect your time and energy—like declining meetings where you add little value or setting boundaries on your availability.

Here's the clever part: when you frame a choice as a personal rule, others tend to respect it more readily. "My rule is I don't take meetings before 10am" often meets less resistance than simply saying "I'm busy then." The rule becomes your identity, not just a preference.

The exercise is to create your strategic rulebook. What rules will automate your progress toward your goals? What rules will protect your most valuable resources—your time and energy?

Why This Matters Right Now

As we start 2026, you have a choice. You can jump into the usual New Year's resolution cycle—set ambitious goals, feel motivated for three weeks, then watch them fade. Or you can take a different approach.

Take time to reflect honestly. Cut through the noise. Look at your patterns. Ask yourself the hard questions about what you're optimizing for, who's in your inner circle, and what rules will actually serve you.

The reThink framework gives you the structure to do this. But here's the critical part: you need genuine, uninterrupted quiet. The workbook actually recommends unplugging your Wi-Fi and turning off your phone for an hour. In our hyper-connected world, we rarely give our minds the space to wander freely and settle into deeper patterns of thought. But it's in those quiet moments that the deepest insights emerge.

Click here to download a copy of the reThink framework

This Week's Podcast Episode

I dive deeper into this framework and share my own reflections on 2025 in this week's podcast episode. I walk through how these mental models apply specifically to business owners and how I'm using them to shape my approach for 2026.

I genuinely believe this framework can help you start the year with real clarity—not just about your business targets, but about who you want to be, what matters most, and how you're going to get there.

Warm regards,

Stephen Edwards
Profit First Accountant & Business Coach
[email protected]

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