Ideas
Nicole Junkermann on Patient Capital and the Autumn Restart, October 2026
A burst of new energy and a refusal to hurry look like opposites. Nicole Junkermann on why October joins them.
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The autumn restart and the idea of patient capital appear to pull in opposite directions. One is a burst of energy in the opening weeks of a new season; the other is a deliberate refusal to hurry. Nicole Junkermann thinks they belong together, and that October is where the join becomes visible.
A restart supplies momentum, and momentum is the scarce ingredient in anything long. The difficulty is that momentum arrives as a general enthusiasm and spends itself on whatever happens to be nearest. Autumn weeks fill quickly, and by the middle of the month most of that energy has gone into correspondence. Patience, in the experience of Nicole Junkermann, is not the opposite of the energy but the method of aiming it.
A short list for the autumn
The list is deliberately short, because a long list of good habits is only the busy season arriving early.
- Name one thing the quarter is for, in a single sentence, and write it somewhere it will still be legible in December.
- Decide now which week in November that sentence gets reread, so the rereading is a habit rather than a rescue.
- Protect one recurring hour before the diary closes over, since the hour will not be available later on request.
- Write down the reason for each slow decision at the time it is taken, in plain words, and resist improving it afterwards.
- Finish two small things carried over from summer, for the disproportionate effect that has on the mood of a month.
That is the whole apparatus, and its usefulness lies in the fact that it survives an ordinary week. Nicole Junkermann has tried more elaborate versions over the years and found that the elaborate ones are abandoned by the middle of November while the short one lasts until spring. The Writing Desk is where most of it gets written down, and the Reading Pace Planner handles the part that is really about pace.
The connection to patience is simple enough. A long horizon is not held by conviction, which is plentiful in September and scarce by February. It is held by a small number of arrangements that make it cheap to keep going while nothing visible is happening. The restart is the moment those arrangements are easiest to make, because the season is new and the diary is briefly honest about how much room there is.
October gives back what it asks for. The light is lower, the year is still open, and a quarter is long enough for one patient thing to move a useful distance. Nicole Junkermann has written before about why the best ideas are worth the wait and about what a late August week is for. This month is the practical middle of both.
This article is a personal reflection and general commentary. It is not financial, investment or professional advice.
More from Nicole Junkermann
For more from Nicole Junkermann, read the full profile of Nicole Junkermann, or start the series at what October asks of long term investors and three quiet strengths of British innovation.