It's Week 25 — Half of 2026 Is Gone. Here's Why That's Actually Good News

I found my 2024 New Year's resolution list last week. It was in a Notes app I haven't opened in a year. The list had five items. I accomplished zero of them. Actually, that's not quite true — I accomplished one, but only because it was "drink more water," which is basically just existing with a better PR team.

I don't think I'm unusual here. January 1st is a terrible day to plan your year. You're tired from the holidays, probably a little hungover, and you're making promises to a version of yourself that doesn't exist yet — the "future you" who wakes up at 5am, meditates for 20 minutes, and never looks at their phone during dinner. Future You is a fiction. Actual You is the person reading this at your desk, probably with a tab open to something work-related, wondering where June went.

Week 25 is different. Week 25 is honest.

Why Week 25, specifically?

Week 25 of 2026 starts today — June 15, 2026. It's the midpoint of a 52-week year. (2026 is actually a 53-week ISO year, which I'll get to, but let's stick with the simple math for now.) You're roughly 24 weeks into the year, with roughly 28 weeks left to go.

That's not an accident. I picked Week 25 three years ago because the math felt right. Half behind you, half ahead of you. You've got real data from the first half — things you actually did, not things you planned to do. And you've still got enough runway to change course.

January 1st asks you to predict the future. Week 25 asks you to look at what happened and decide what to do next. One of those questions is a lot more useful than the other.

The year I almost missed because I wasn't counting weeks

Here's a specific example of why week numbers changed how I think about time.

In 2023, I spent the first half of the year heads-down on a project that wasn't going anywhere. I knew it wasn't going anywhere. Everyone around me knew it. But I kept telling myself "it's still early" and "things will pick up."

Then one day in late June I happened to look at a week number calendar. I saw that I was in Week 26. Twenty-six Mondays had passed. Twenty-six Sunday nights of "what did I actually do this week." And the number that hit me wasn't 26 — it was 26 out of 52. I'd spent half a year on something that wasn't working, and I'd spent it because "June" sounds different from "Week 26."

"June" is a month name. It's vague. It could be early June, mid June, late June — it's a 30-day blob that your brain doesn't process as a countdown. But "Week 26" is a number. It's sitting on a scale from 1 to 52. When you say "I'm on Week 26," your brain automatically does the math: 26 down, 26 to go. Halfway.

That's when I killed the project. Two weeks later I'd started something new that turned into the most productive stretch of my career. The only thing that changed was how I measured time. Instead of months, I counted weeks. Instead of "later this year," I said "by Week 35."

The mid-year review I actually do (no journaling required)

Every Week 25, I sit down for about an hour and do three things. No fancy framework. No 20-page reflection guide. Just three things:

One: count the weeks I actually shipped something. I open my calendar, go week by week from Week 1 to Week 24, and mark each week where I finished something meaningful. A feature shipped, a document published, a hard conversation had — anything where effort turned into outcome. Most years, the number is lower than I expect. The first time I did this, I had 7 productive weeks out of 24. Seven. The rest were meetings, planning, context-switching, and what I now call "fake progress" — activity that felt like work but produced nothing anyone would notice.

Seeing that ratio — 7 out of 24 — changed my behavior more than any productivity book ever did. You can't argue with your own calendar.

Two: pick one thing to stop doing. Not "do less of." Stop. Completely. Every year I pick one recurring commitment, habit, or project that's eating time and producing nothing, and I kill it. Last year it was a weekly status meeting that had been running for 18 months and whose original purpose nobody could remember. Nobody complained when I canceled it. Nobody even noticed.

Three: pick one thing to finish by Week 52. Not ten things. One. The thing that, if I finish it, will make me look back at the second half of the year and say "that was worth it." I write it at the top of a note, and I look at it every Monday morning when I plan the week.

That's the whole review. It takes an hour. I've done it three years in a row now, and each year the ratio of "productive weeks" to "fake-progress weeks" has gotten better.

About 2026 having 53 weeks

One thing worth mentioning: 2026 is a 53-week ISO year. That means the year doesn't end at Week 52 — it goes to Week 53, which falls at the very end of December 2026.

If you're using week numbers to plan the rest of your year, you've actually got 28 weeks left from Week 25 to Week 53, not 27. That's an extra seven days I didn't account for the first time I did this math. I learned about 53-week years the hard way — but that's a different story.

The point is: you've got more time than you think. Check the calendar. Count the weeks. Don't assume 52.

Try it this week

You don't need a special system to do this. Open your calendar. Count backwards from now to January. How many weeks did you actually ship something meaningful? Be honest — no credit for "I was busy." Busy isn't the same as productive. We all know this. We just don't like looking at the numbers.

Then pick one thing to stop and one thing to finish. Write them down somewhere you'll see them every Monday. If you're using a week number calendar, you can literally write the goal next to Week 52 (or Week 53, for 2026) and track backwards from there.

The best part about a mid-year review is that there's no pressure. January 1st has all this cultural weight — you're supposed to emerge from the holidays transformed, a new person with new habits and a new gym membership. Week 25 has none of that. It's just a Monday in June. Nobody's watching. Nobody's posting about their "Week 25 resolutions" on Instagram.

Which is exactly why it works.