What you need is rhythms, not resolutions — and Michigan is the best place to create them

2025 was my first full calendar year working in Michigan’s startup ecosystem, during which time I became familiar with “9-9-6.” This is the startup buzzword for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week. Margaret O’Mara, professor of history at University of Washington, said it has its origins in China’s tech industry and eventually crossed over the Pacific to the U.S.

Though not all would explicitly name these exact hours, over the last year, the Midwest version of this hustle has certainly been something I’ve felt and heard in conversation, events, and sometimes, just in the overall vibe of certain spaces. It is a vague and persistent notion that more is always better, whether it is hours worked, customers acquired, profits made, or events attended. 

It reminds me of what Byung-Chul Han, philosopher and culture theorist in Germany, said in The Burnout Society. In his critique of our exhausting modern culture, he says that, “can” is always more efficient than “should.” Or in other words, in an achievement-driven society like ours, we strive to add more and more of what we “can” achieve or do, rather than accept limits to focus on what we “should’ actually do. “Can” is limitless, whereas a disciplined, focused “should” is limited. 

We can always add more features, more programs, more goals, more resolutions, more certifications. 

But the question is: should we?

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What are you managing — really?

In your quest to the next milestone, project deadline, or resolution, sometimes we think a check box is merely that. A 2-D word that we simply execute and check off a list. 

But consider what you are truly managing or monitoring to make each of these happen: An overflowing inbox, team relational dynamics, workflows and systems, cash flow, weather and environmental factors, your own personal relationship dynamics and responsibilities, market changes. 

Add to this, the fact that you couldn’t sleep for the third night in a row because your dog got sick, and that you had to shovel your way out of the driveway this morning and barely made it to the meeting on time. 

From this perspective, we should have more respect for what we do accomplish in a given day, given all of the ever-changing variables. 

We’re often told to manage time, but that is just one of many competing factors. This is why experts recommend managing your energy, rather than simply managing your time. 

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Automating decisions in a low-tech way

One way productivity experts recommend managing your energy is to automate decisions. 

This can, in one sense, mean outsourcing part of your workload to AI and automation tools. But another, low-tech, accessible way to automate your decisions is to create daily, weekly, monthly, or annual rhythms to create the spaces you need to manage the various domains of your life, without having to think about it ahead of time.

Rhythms and rituals are not just one-off time blocks, but predictable ways to pass time that create and sustain energy for the long haul. They create some level of predictability in an unpredictable ecosystem and world. “[Rituals] transform being-in-the-world to being at home,” said Byung-Chul Han in another of his books, The Disappearance of Rituals. “They turn the world into a reliable place.”

This looks like building in opportunities to take a walk after a weekly meeting you know will be draining; a monthly practice to make a pourover coffee and assess what actions brought the most impact; a quarterly beer and darts with colleagues from other companies to workshop and problem-solve; a three-day winter cabin trip to reflect and strategize.

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Managing energy in Michigan’s seasons

At this time of year, many make resolutions — but I say rhythms are actually what make resolutions possible. Rhythms keep what actually creates energy in your workflow accessible to you, so you have the energy to sustain the resolutions you hope to achieve. 

Michigan’s seasons offer the opportunity to develop a rhythm of work that is truly strategic and sustainable, in that living here requires adaptation to seasonal factors. The natural environment itself provides you with biological cues to launch, ramp up, execute, and eventually, to refine, re-focus, restore, and reflect. All elements of sustainable, meaningful work. 

I’ve lived in Michigan for 1.5 years. It remains cold and snowy far longer here than in other places I’ve lived, such as a desert that was sunny about 360 days a year. I’ve needed to embrace seasonal living more than ever before. Suddenly, shoveling snow from the front and back steps is a ritual in creative thinking. The sun rising over the snow-dusted barns on my commute is a ritual in maintaining perspective. 

Winter creates both limits and opportunities, and in this my third winter since moving, I’ll know how to better strategize. Seasonal living is not optional here. 

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Find your unique rhythms over resolutions

“9-9-6” can work for some people, some of the time. And there are times when speed is necessary and rhythms simply won’t match the task at hand. In the long run, though, limitless productivity can work — but only for so long.

You can hack your way out of limits, but what would you stand to lose in the process? As a mentor of mine used to say, it’s possible to become excellent at things that don’t actually matter.

Rhythms keep the center of your world anchored not only in what you want to accomplish, but in the person you want to become. And in a 4-season place like Michigan, nature almost forces you to reassess your life’s rhythms and routines every quarter. 

The change in environment can serve as the marker of seasonal winter rhythms: productivity, plus space for reflection, listening to your team, and taking stock. 

What if, instead of pushing through biology and against nature, you work within it? What if limits actually made you more focused in how you use your finite resources, more impactful in the hours you spend on tasks, and more present to people who will be there long after you reach the next milestone?

The benefit of a harsh Michigan winter is that it necessitates change. Even if you’re not looking, it will find you. And change is an opportunity to re-evaluate how your days flow from start to finish, and from one to the next. 

Instead of resolutions, find simple, seasonal rhythms that recognize the real variables you’re working with each day. What if it is rhythms and rituals that will make the concrete, sustainable change you need most this year? 

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Aria Spears leads cross-functional projects in Michigan’s startup ecosystem at Michigan Founders Fund. She’s worked in community-building organizations for ten years, is a Duke grad student studying community innovation, and previously lived in Fayetteville, NC.