You're not behind (pinky swear)

This Week, For Us | Issue #004

We’ve officially crossed the halfway mark of 2026.

If the goals you set in January just flashed before your eyes, and the math on where you thought you’d be by July isn’t mathin, this is for you.

There are two things happening that make the realization that it’s mid 2026 a little jarring:

1. How our memory measures time
2. How we measure our progress

How our memory measures time

For some reason time passes so reliably yet it’s so easy to be completely shocked by the passing of time.

That shocked feeling comes from how memory measures time. Looking back, your brain doesn't count hours, it counts distinct memories.

Novelty is distinct, routine isn’t.

So six months of full, repetitive weeks gets compressed into what feels like six weeks, and when the calendar says July, the gap between felt time and actual time can feel a little like… 😳

Think about the holiday paradox: a week-long trip flies by while you're on it but takes up so much space in memory. That’s because it was dense with new moments.

But, just because your brain compressed the time, doesn’t mean that the past six months wasn’t FULL of incredible moments of building, learning, growing, and living.

Six months of morning coffees, of walks, of dinners that seemed not-so-special but were actually incredibly special, of the regular days that were filled with running errands and client calls and moments with your family.

Let’s do a decompression exercise:

Open the photo album on your phone and scroll back to January. Go month by month and find your favourite memories from each one, and favorite the photos that remind you of moments you loved.

Twenty minutes of decompressing your memory and you’ll be reminded that you’ve lived half a year of your precious life since January.

How we measure our progress

The feeling of behind is caused by one thing… a perceived gap between where you are and where you think you should be.

It is nothing more than thinking the plan is more accurate and true than the actual unfolding of events in your life.

January-you chose those goals and timelines with the least information she’d have all year. What you knew in January when you set them is a fraction of what you know now.

Judging July-you with January-you’s plan means discounting your actual experience because of a guess you made in January.

When there’s a gap between the plan and where you are, the gap is nothing more than information about the guess.

Sometimes it’s telling you the goal takes longer than the guess. You’ve been doing the work and the results are coming. If that’s you, keep going.

And sometimes it’s telling you that the plan itself wasn’t quite right. That for whatever reason, it didn’t work for you. A plan can be rewritten this afternoon.

But, being “behind” is impossible.

July-you is the most qualified person who has ever existed to reach your goals precisely because of the last six months.

The only question to ask, are you making progress on the things that matter most to you?

If yes, keep going.

If no, time for a new plan?

---

Maybe you’ve heard…

Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5 on Tuesday. It performs close to their top-tier models, and it’s much better at multi-step work.

If you’ve been using Opus 4.8, you can swap to Sonnet 5 as your default to save on usage without noticing a big difference on the output for most tasks.

And Fable 5, Anthropic’s newest top-tier model for the public, is back. It launched June 9, disappeared three days later under a US export-control order, and came back Wednesday after the restrictions were lifted.

Pro and Max plans can use it at no extra cost through July 7.

If you have a team and you use Slack, Claude Tag is new: a shared Claude in your team’s channels that anyone can tag with a task, and it works right in the thread.

Coming next week: the Epic Guide to Claude Design. Anthropic's design tool got a major upgrade this week and it’s so good. Next week's guide walks you through setting it up with your design system.

Where to make images with AI right now

If you want an image for your business (a post graphic, a hero image, a product mockup), ChatGPT and Gemini are both great, easy options.

Describe what you want in plain language, wait a few seconds, download the file.

Gemini made some interesting design choices here:

I personally enjoy the shoes and jersey.

Google’s image model, Nano Banana (I freaking love that name), released a faster version on Tuesday. It’s what runs image generation in the Gemini app, and if your graphics include words, the Pro tier renders text properly.

And ChatGPT’s images got their big upgrade this spring: it keeps faces and details consistent while you edit, so you can ask for the same image with one thing changed and it won’t redraw everything from scratch.

---

What’s new from Hey Systems

Amy x

PS: “The dogs were good again this week.”