How to cope with 2026

This piece will drop behind the Cartoon Gravity Pro paywall in a week or so.

I don't generally go in for the idea of years being good or bad; it's just a unit of time within which stuff happens (Fun fact: During the Paris Commune, the city briefly tried out decimal time: 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour, 10 days in a week etc. It did not work. I got this from the incredible four episode run on the Paris Commune in David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell's Journey Through Time podcast). However, I am unusually tempted to say that 2025 has been a shitshow, and it seems to have been that way for a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons.

In my world, the TV and film industry is consolidating/contracting/whatever other word you can find to replace "run by idiots and cowards". That has affected the lives of writers, directors, actors and crew. Fewer TV shows and movies are getting developed, and only a fraction of those are getting made. Almost everything is based on a book or an old TV show, or a previous movie. Original ideas are not welcome.

I know quite a few people in these industries who have decided they are going to sit this one out and wait for the Good Old Days to return. But the Good Old Days are not coming back. They never do. And that is not to say that the bad times are going to stay bad, but this is a period of transition into something different and the different might be better or worse. I think we have a little way further to go, but here and there green shoots are starting to appear.

In the wider world, the arrival of Trump to the White House in January seems to have raised baseline anxiety across the board. Whether you like him or not, it's not calming for anyone to wake up every morning wondering what new crazy shit is going to happen today.

And then there's Ukraine, and Israel/Gaza, and the UK media's apparent love affair with Nigel Farage, and all the English swastikas hanging damply from lamp-posts, and a government that appears to be perpetually frozen in the headlights...

Will next year be better? You might think that it couldn't possibly be worse. But if you had said that at the end of any one of the last ten years, you would have been wrong. So I wouldn't bet on it.

Lots of things seem fucked up and broken and I don't honestly know if they are more broken than usual or if our increased, and increasing, access to information just makes everything seem worse than it has been in the past. But here's the truth: it doesn't matter.

Each of us has a sphere of concern and a sphere of control. Our sphere of concern might seem increasingly vast and chaotic, but our sphere of control is pretty much exactly as big (or small) as it has ever been. If we spend too much time focusing on the sphere of concern, it can quickly feel like we're in free fall because we get overwhelmed by all the things that we could possibly worry about.

What we know about anxiety, though, is that it is all one giant "What if...?" Anything that is actually happening can be dealt with. It may not have a good outcome, but real problems can be tackled and resolved one way or the other. Whether it's a global pandemic or an issue at work, the moment we're inside a problem, we're not worrying, we're acting. Worry is not the response to a problem, it is the anticipation of something that has not yet happened and, crucially, may not happen. (If it is definitely going to happen, then we should already be problem-solving.)

Being conscious of the problems in the world is only right and proper, and it may prompt us to do whatever we can to help. But suffering from anxiety over things we cannot control doesn't help anyone and it's no good for our mental health and wellbeing. That is true on a global level, but it's also true much closer to home. Yes, you might get sick, you might run out of money, you might lose your job, you might suffer from any number of misfortunes. If any of these are already happening, or are definitely going to happen, then you're in problem-solving mode. If they MIGHT happen, then they're not real.

If everything is fine right now, then everything is fine. That is the essence of the idea of living in the moment. But it's hard to do. Anxiety comes from within, but it is triggered by a lot of external factors. And there are a LOT of external factors right now. It's all well and good to say that there's no point worrying about what you can't control; rationally we all know that. But we can't help but be overwhelmed by inputs.

How is 2026 going to be? The same as 2025? Better? Worse? We don't know. That's outside of our sphere of control. What is within our control is how we deal with it. If we were overwhelmed by 2025, how can we curb that feeling next year? Trump will still be Trump, the world will still be a mess. How do we cope? I have a few ideas...

Social Media

Social media is almost all noise and very little signal. It's a bombardment. If you're still using it, spend some time thinking about why. Could you keep in touch with people another way? If you think you need it for work (you don't, because it's no longer 2007), then ask yourself if you're ONLY using it for work and how you might alter your habits to keep it effective without so much noise.

The News

You can be across world events without having to mainline clickbait news. Get an RSS reader and curate your inputs. Or move back to print media. Or spend some time once a week looking over summarised news that has already been analysed and interpreted by professionals.

Personal Knowledge Management

This is not a major one, but given where you're reading this, you couldn't reasonably expect it not to come up. Here's the epiphany: You probably do not need a Personal Knowledge Management system. I understand that this seems rich coming from me, but you have spent most of your life getting by just fine without one. If you NEED a PKM, if it solves a real problem because you're doing academic work or similar, then you already know that. But if you've fallen into the trap of thinking that everything you read has to be highlighted and tagged in case you forget it, then now is the time to have a very stern word with yourself. Forgetting things is perfectly natural and necessary. Making a note of something you want to remember is also completely reasonable - you just don't need a whole complex system to do that. Just write it down somewhere.

Make before you manage

Every day, do something - a journal entry, a blog post, some notes, some writing, morning pages, draw a picture, take a photograph - that is output rather than input. Don't dive straight into emails, or messages, or a newsfeed. Keep the outside world at bay for an hour or so. It will still be there when you get to it, but don't let outside forces influence your mood from the get-go.

Respond slowly

Around 80% of problems presented to you, especially those that come via email, will go away or be solved by someone else if you ignore them for long enough. We can all tell the difference between something that is urgent and something that really isn't. Don't let yourself be fooled into absorbing other people's supposed urgency. Work to your own schedule and your own set of priorities.

Go low-tech

An objective glance at the Apple or Android app store will expose that 90% of the apps out there are solving a problem that didn't exist before the "solution" was created. What do you actually need? A calendar, probably. A browser, a media player, whatever software you need to use for work... What else? And yet we all have dozens, if not hundred of apps that all need updating and managing and blah blah blah. And that's before we even get to those "tools" that have now integrated AI to help you do a thing you never needed to do. I'm writing this post in IA Writer; a blank page that acts like a typewriter, but which creates future-proofed text files that sync anywhere and can be used be pretty much anything. Why do I need a separate notes app? Or a word processor? Or an AI co-pilot?

More analogue time

A paper book, a notepad and pen, a magazine, an actual newspaper... We don't need to revisit the science on the superiority of the tactile world, we all know that writing something down on paper is better for mental health and recall than typing it on a computer or a phone. I think we all also understand that curling up on a sofa to read is preferable to staring blearily at a screen. But I suspect most of us don't go analogue as often as we could. Shut the world out, get rid of distractions and just focus on something you want to read, write or make.

As a suggestion, the artist Sonya Vine offers a really great course on how to sketch people that is a great foundation (and would make an awesome Christmas gift - I do not get paid for saying that.)

Get outside

Again, we don't need to review the science. Just get outside; go for a walk or a run or a bike ride, or just go sit on a bench somewhere. It doesn't even have to be in some idyllic spot. You need some air in your lungs, you need to feel the sun or the wind on your face, and you need to be engaging with the world.

If most of your experience of other people is reading about them online, then you'll start to hate humanity pretty fast. But if you go out amongst people, you start to experience all the nuance that is lost in the online experience. Just be out there, in amongst it all. Watch people, observe behaviour. Exhale. The world is infinitely complex. Realise that, and give up trying to manage it.

Don't be a main character

From honking horns in traffic, to people barging past you in a supermarket, we see that it's very easy to get caught up in Main Character Energy. Here's the newsflash: People are not fundamentally good. We are capable of being good, certainly, but fundamentally we are driven by selfishness. We're late for work and everyone is in our way. All the other drivers on the road are idiots. It's really easy to fall into patterns of behaviour predicated on the idea that the thing we are trying to do is more important than whatever anyone else is doing. It's never true.

Try not having a mission. Try working with the mantra "I don't mind what happens."

This doesn't mean we can't focus on what is important to us, but it's worth acknowledging that no one else knows what that is, so they are probably not trying to thwart us.

If you try to flow through the world like water, you will meet less resistance and you will cause less resistance to others, but you will still accomplish whatever you're setting out to do. If you're stuck in a queue, read a book, listen to music, daydream, or watch people. Groaning or muttering or getting angry or honking your horn does nothing to alter your circumstances, it just makes the experience more unpleasant for you and for everyone around you. You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

Don't seek credit

Harry Truman said "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." The accomplishment is everything. You set out to do a thing and it got done. That is all that matters. Who gets the credit, who looks like they "won" is all ego and nonsense. If you have to look weak, or like you lost, in order to get something done, so be it.

As with Main Character Energy, the world is made a lot less pleasant by people who need to "win" everything and get a pat on the back for it.

You are lucky

There was a study a while back (don't ask me for sources on this stuff) where subjects were divided into two groups, based upon whether or not they considered themselves to be lucky. Both groups were then asked to look through a newspaper and count how many adverts were on the pages. On one of the early pages, there was an advert that read "You can stop counting now, there are forty adverts in this paper." Overwhelmingly, the "lucky" people spotted this message and the "unlucky" people missed it and kept counting.

People who consider themselves lucky, or who believe that things generally work out for the best, tend to have a wider peripheral vision for opportunity. If you believe the opposite, you don't see possibilities because you're not expecting them. We build our own mental models of the world. Some think it is working with them, some think it is working against them. They're both right, because each idea is self-proving.

A useful tip for this; when something apparently bad happens, assume that it was meant to happen for some greater good. Ask yourself "How is this actually the best possible turn of events?" Looked at through that prism, and with a bit of imagination, almost anything can yield possibilities. This correlates to ideas in Ryan Holiday's book "The Obstacle is the Way", which is worth putting on your reading list.

Do What Thou Wilt

Yes, we have been recording "Crowley" this week, and so this quote is top of mind. It's usually interpreted as some kind of ghastly libertarian nonsense, but there may be something to it. We all have things that we don't want to do (tax returns, medical appointments etc) but which we have to just get on with. But we also have a host of things we don't want to do that we really don't need to do either. These are worth looking at. Some people benefit from making a "To Don't" list.

I was watching an interview with Justin Vernon the other day and he said "I only do what I want", which seems (assuming he is not including medical appointments and tax returns) like quite a good way to live. On the surface, it might seem privileged and unattainable. But is it? Wouldn't we all benefit from a little judicious pruning to our supposed obligations?

2026 is around the corner. None of us know what it will bring, but all of us are equipped to survive it, to embrace it, to flourish within it. For those of us who have found the outgoing year to be unusually tough, it is worth taking stock of how we might have failed to make the most of it (whilst still acknowledging that we nonetheless made it through) and to look at how we might improve our strategies for our next trip around the sun.

Be lucky!