Nicole Junkermann on the Habits That Carry Into October 2026

The ones that last

Most habits do not survive a year. They survive a month, which is long enough to feel like success and short enough to leave nothing behind. Nicole Junkermann has grown steadily more interested in the small number that do carry, and in what they have in common, which turns out to have very little to do with discipline.

The habits that last are the ones that were small enough never to need defending. They did not require a good week or a clear diary. They fitted into an ordinary day without being noticed, and so they were still there when the ordinary days came back.

It is worth being honest about the ones that did not survive. They were usually the ambitious ones: the schemes that needed an early start, a particular mood, or a clear run of days that ordinary life was never going to supply. There was nothing wrong with any of them except that they asked for conditions rather than fitting the conditions already there, and conditions are the first thing a busy autumn takes away.

Five that carry

The list is short, and it has not changed a great deal in several years.

• A fixed hour that belongs to nothing in particular, protected less by willpower than by simply never offering it to anything else.
• One book at a time, read slowly enough to remember, which the reading notes argue for at greater length.
• A walk on the same route often enough to notice when it changes, which is most of what the routes are for.
• A page written at the end of the day, however dull, because the dull pages turn out to be the ones that hold the record.
• A short pause before agreeing to anything, which costs nothing and quietly prevents most of a year's overcommitment.

Why October is the test

October is where habits are examined, because October is the first busy month after a slow one. Anything that only worked in a quiet week will fail now, and it is far better to discover that in the first week of the month than in the last week of the year.

None of the five is impressive on its own, which is exactly the point. A habit that impresses is usually one that is being performed, and performances stop as soon as the audience leaves or the month turns difficult. The ones worth keeping are too ordinary to perform and too small to resent, and they are the ones still running in January.

What passes the test tends to keep going through the winter without much further attention. That is the whole of it: not a system and not a resolution, simply a handful of small things that were never difficult enough to abandon. The notebook keeps the running tally, and the note on beginning again in October covers the other half of the month.

There is a whole quarter ahead, and habits that carry are the only ones that will still be there at the end of it.