The "Good Old Days" Mindset

Because we need some mindset other than "I'm cold" in February

Me and Charlie on a Good Old Day.

Hi! My name is Bree, and I write about how to have better days at work (and in life). Subscribe for writing on everything from building cozy teams to living a Portfolio Life. You’ll also be the first to know about book launch events and giveaways—Today Was Fun will hit bookstores July 2025!

I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days
before you’ve actually left them.

- Andy Bernard, The Office

I’ve thought about this quote for years, and the sentiment for much longer.

• I think of pictures of me as a kid at my grandparents’ house with all of our family around. Everyone was healthy. There were chips on the patio on a warm day. It was magic, but the time, we just thought it was Sunday.

• I think of the many weeks when my mom was in a rehab facility after surgery related to her cancer. My dad and I drove up every day to see her. It was a gut-wrenching time, but somehow I look back fondly on those drives and on the Hallmark movies we would watch as I snuggled next to my mom in her hospital bed.

• I think of the crazy project sprint our team did camped out in a hotel in Seattle for a week. We worked constantly and laughed constantly. Except for that one night I cried because it was also really stressful. We went on a boat and Sandra danced.

I wasn’t thinking it at the time, but the days in each of those stories are, to me today, Good Old Days.

I conjure up memories like those whenever I’m feeling lost or stressed or down. It’s a mental trick I play to help me find perspective—because invariably, I am currently in some future-me’s Good Old Days.

For one, it feels like it’s been winter for 17 years, and although I usually really love a good hygge vibe, I’m over it. So I remind myself what I’ll miss: the fresh air with not a mosquito in sight; the way stepping into a hot shower feels when I have a chill in my bones; the cozy hibernation and lack of social (or self-imposed) pressure to be out and enjoying longer days.

I’m also in this super weird period with the book when everything feels slow and urgent and anxiety-ridden. I’m reaching out for blurbs now which feels kind of like asking the most famous people you know to prom. It’s a vulnerable put-yourself-out-there feeling and you can’t even make them a big glittery sign and hold it up in front of their friends. You just have to write the most high-stakes email ever and then… wait. I also need to start asking companies if they’d be interested in bulk orders and then there’s pitching conferences. While I’m here… if anyone is interested in buying the book in bulk (think: copies for your team, function, org, or conference) let me know because there are discounts and fun incentives.

Anyway, yes: The Good Old Days. Let me do the trick as I type: One day I will look back at this time appreciate how much newness there was in it. I was learning how to be an author. How to put art into the world. How to sell not a consulting service, but a little bit of my heart in book format because I wanted other people to have it. I was getting to email writers I admired for decades. I was getting to experience life in the creative arena. That’s pretty cool.

What Good Old Days are you living in right now?

Remember, not everything has to be good for you to be in the Good Old Days. There just has to be (and there always will be) some things you will genuinely miss in the next season:

• What people do you have around you now that you might not always have?

  • There’s death, but also friends moving, colleagues leaving, kids growing up

• What did you get to do today that you won’t always get to do?

  • Working on a certain project, reading a kid bedtime stories, enjoying the city you won’t always live in, sipping a seasonal beverage

• What unpleasant thing do you know will come, but it isn’t here yet?

  • This could be anything from mosquitos to arthritis

I’m writing this in relation to life, but it also works at work. Those impossible early days of a start up become the joy of invention and beginning. Tough moments for the business become the time you all rallied together. And whatever work product and hairstyles you think are super sharp now will become “so 2025” in the most nostalgic way.

Some future you is going to look back on February 20, 2025 with fondness. Enjoy it while you’re here—today.

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