2026 - Year of Imperfection

Feb 17

While working at Stripe, our management group challenged everyone to come up with a word of the year. This exercise both impressed and irked me. There is so much in life to narrow it down to a single word.

Fast forward to 2026 and I find myself leaning into the subject again. There has been one word that has come to mind as I’ve thought about what went right and what went wrong in 2025 and what I hope to accomplish in 2026. That word is imperfection.

In the last year I hit amazing highs, but there were some serious lows as well. Many of those lows were self-caused by not believing in myself and holding to an impossibly high standard. I don’t want to continue that pattern in the coming year. I want to live by two quotes that I keep on my whiteboard and have started to remind myself of daily.

“Imperfect action is better than no action.” - Debatable source of the quote, but the message is clear.
“Done is better than good.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

2026 is a year to embrace the imperfection and enjoy being me. To check off the list and provide the service and support that those around me look for, while not being weighed down by responsibilities and an inability to disconnect.

Cheers to a great year!