Walking into 2026...One Step at a Time
Flow, wonderment, and walking more gently through our work and our world
As this New Year begins, it'd be dishonest to pretend that everything is fine. For many of us, 2025 was a grueling, heartbreaking year, and 2026 hasn’t exactly kicked off the way we might have hoped it would, either.
But…in the midst of all this a small story of quiet steadiness has been unfolding on the roads and highways of the United States. A group of Buddhist monks - and their loyal four-legged companion Aloka - is walking through sun and storm from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington DC - approximately 2300 miles, over the course of 110 days - in what they call a “Walk for Peace,” offering a gentle act of presence in an otherwise noisy and frightened world.
They aren’t carrying placards, shouting slogans, or arguing online. They simply walk, chant, and accept whatever questions or kindnesses comes their way. And they keep moving - step after step, town after town - embodying a simple belief that how we move through the world truly matters.
Walking as a practice like this appears in many traditions, not just Buddhism. Pilgrimages, peace marches, and solidarity walks have long been ways for people of all beliefs (and none) to transform their values into visible, explicit action: each step a quiet “yes” to our shared humanity, and a quiet “no” to indifference.
This past year, I added to my recurring personal standard work card what has arguably become my most valuable recurring task:
“Look for moment of wonderment.”
(My colleague and Modus community member Tim Taylor agreed to take up this challenge with me, and I want to warmly acknowledge him here for holding me accountable and walking this experiment alongside me. Thank you, my friend. 🙏🏼)
Some days, checking off that task on my card has been easy; the past few days it’s felt near impossible. But the simple, visual insistence of this task on a card that automatically appears on my board each week, challenging me to pull it into my Done column, has quietly albeit profoundly changed how I move through even the bleakest of days. It nudges me to notice one small, indisputable sign that the world is - that people are - still capable of beauty and surprise.
In the work Jim and I do at Modus and of course with Personal Kanban, we often talk about “flow”: work and the communication around it flowing smoothly instead of forming a bottleneck; attention flowing unimpeded by distraction or social threat. Building visual work systems with triggers to ensure both process flow and cognitive flow helps people move through their day without being ground down in and by the process. Visual management is one of the ways we protect that kind of humane flow: by making reality visible so we can respond thoughtfully, rather than reacting frantically.
The monks’ long walk and the small, daily wonderment card on my board both remind me that flow is not about speed or volume, it’s about movement with intention.
Each step they take and each card Tim and I pull into our respective Done columns is a quiet refusal to let fear, outrage, or exhaustion completely shut us down.
It’s a deliberate choice to keep moving, gently, in the direction of care.
Most of us are not going to walk across a continent this year, and many of us unfortunately don’t wield the influence to change the forces that are causing so much pain. But in our own work and lives, we do have the power to walk differently and to see differently, simply by shaping our flow and our focus. So while I don’t ascribe to grandiose end-of-year resolution-making, with the help of my kanban I have been experimenting with habitualizing a few small, concrete steps that help me keep moving gently in the direction that feels right to me, and I’d like to offer them to you as possibilities to try on in your own way:
To design our days so that conversations and creative work that are important to us personally are given the space and respect they deserve, instead of causing us guilt or being minimized as frivolities or squeezed into the barely-free moments we can spare;
To pause for a moment of genuine contact with someone we otherwise might rush past, through one thoughtful message, one check-in, one honest “But how are you doing really?”;
To look for one opportunity each day to remove a little friction or needless stress from someone else’s path at work, even it it takes an extra few minutes; and
To give ourselves one tiny daily prompt - a card, a note, a small ritual - to look for wonderment instead of only bracing for impact.
This week, many in the Christian faith are celebrating the Epiphany, a feast whose name simply means “manifestation” or “appearing” - light becoming visible, meaning breaking through what once felt purely ordinary. You don’t have to share in this tradition to feel the resonance here: people walking through darkness, paying attention to small signs, and letting what they discover change how they move in the world.
The monks’ journey reminds us that peace is not an event but, much like my finding wonderment daily, it’s a practice. That it’s not some grand solution, but a series of very ordinary steps taken with intention.
Our kanban boards, our conversations, and our choices at work can be like that, too: modest, visual commitments to treat one another - and yes, most definitely ourselves too - with a little more humanity.
So as we move into 2026, this is my wish to all of you:
May this year bring you people who walk beside you with care.
May you find, even in difficult conditions, moments of wonderment that you can honestly pull into Done.
And may the work that you do become one way you take your own steady steps towards a more livable, humane world.
As always, thank you for walking with Modus this past year, in starts and stops, in experiments and hard decisions, in fatigue and especially in hope.
We are deeply grateful for your trust, your companionship, and your persistence in trying to make work - and the work around your work - kinder and more sustainable.
With love and appreciation,
Toni
💕🙏🏼
If this resonates with you and you’d like a gentle space to explore what walking differently might look like in your own work, you’re warmly invited to join our free, monthly Modus Open Lean Coffee. Once a month, people from around the world gather with us to talk about humane work, visual management, and the very real experiments they’re running to move through their days with more intention and less harm. Bring a story about a moment of wonderment, a small change you’ve made to protect your own flow, or simply a question you’re sitting with. No slides, no sales pitches - ever. Just an hour of shared reflection and practical ideas for walking more gently together through these trying times.
Do consider joining us.
As Søren Kierkegaard said, “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”