'My advice for choosing a word of the year? Do the opposite.'

If you're currently agonising over your word of the year, I have a suggestion that may horrify you: Do the opposite of it.

I say this as someone who last year chose PRODUCTIVE as my word of the year. It was January, and as always happens whenever I slow down for even a second, I realised I was stressed and overwhelmed and my nervous system insisted I must do everything at once but somehow immediately.

So naturally, I decided the solution was more pressure.

"Productive," I told myself. "That will solve all my problems this year." 

Lol.

Watch the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud discussing their 2026 predictions. Post continues below.

A few days later, I found myself sitting across from a therapist. She asked, "Have you thought about a word of the year?"

"Yes," I said, smugly. Obviously I have, I listen to Mamamia Out Loud. 

When I told her my word, her face changed. You know the look, the that's interesting but also very concerning look.

"Why don't you try doing the opposite?" she suggested gently. "Something like… slow?"

Slow???

Slow sounded stressful. Slow sounded deeply unambitious. Slow sounded like the opposite of goals. Which, my therapist calmly explained, was exactly the point. So, I tried it, reluctantly. Because it had become clear that whatever I was doing before wasn't working.

For the first six months of the year, I wasn't allowed to write anything (aside from my paid work, of course). 

No "amazing new book ideas" hijacking my thoughts. No "cool essay" concepts keeping me up late. No Notes app fragments, half-written stories or dramatic opening lines saved for later. No writing feelings instead of feeling them. 

Just… stop.

I'm a writer by profession and by passion, and I've always said that writing is how I process things. Trauma, arguments, life events, big feelings. Which is true, but also, if I'm honest, I write compulsively because it makes me feel productive. Like I'm doing something useful with my emotions instead of actually sitting with them, or saying them out loud to another human.

Image: Supplied.

But at the start of last year, my brain was fried and I was writing badly. I was half-processing everything through prose instead of reality. And the more exhausted I became, the more I wrote, because writing is what I do when I'm stressed.

So I stopped, for six months. And instead of writing, I read.

Oh, how I read. And you know what, I remembered that reading, actual reading, not headlines or captions or half a paragraph before a child interrupts, has always been the thing that steadies me. But like many parents, I'd labelled reading as a luxury I no longer had time for.

But it turns out that for me, reading wasn't a luxury, it was medicine.

Image: Supplied.

Last year, my brain slowed down and my thoughts became clearer. I felt more patient, more creative, more measured. I remembered who I was before my attention span was permanently fractured. 

And then, without trying, something wild happened. My brain became electric again.

Ideas came back. Proper ones. My writer's block evaporated and when I eventually sat down to write, the words poured out in a way they hadn't in years. I was writing better than I had in a long time.

All because I stopped.

Listen to the Mamamia Out Loud hosts' words of the year for 2026. Post continues below.

Which brings me back to the word of the year. If your word of the year feels heavy, if it feels like a performance review or if it makes your chest tighten instead of expand, maybe the answer isn't to commit harder. Maybe it's to do the opposite.

If your word is productive, try slow. If it's disciplined, maybe try forgiveness. If it's focus, you could try wandering. If it's more, maybe your word needs to be less.  

Image: Supplied.

Because I think that sometimes the thing we're chasing is hiding in the direction we're afraid to go.

Trust me, I chose PRODUCTIVE last year, and SLOW saved me in the end. 

Feature image: Supplied.