Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Have your New Year’s resolutions bitten the dust yet?
If you made it into February congratulate yourself. You’re in the minority. Apparently, 80% of all New Year’s resolutions fail or are abandoned by the second week of February. Most don’t get anywhere near this far: 17 January has become known unofficially as Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day, the point at which swathes of people give up on their goals.
Should we worry?
Getting the life you want
In management-speak terms, resolutions are our attempts to be more strategic and less tactical. They are our annual determination to focus on long-term objectives (what we really want in our lives), rather than constantly reacting to daily needs and external pressures. It’s putting into practise that lifestyle guru mantra that getting the life we want tomorrow comes from the things we do today.
Makes sense. But the resolution fail rate speaks for itself.
Individuals and companies alike know we should be more strategic in what we do and how we do it. As humans we just seem to be terrible at it. Look at the climate crisis. We know we can’t continue as we are. And yet we do. Change is hard and often involves a cost. So we put it off. Another year passes and those goals remain as far away as ever.
Some companies are big enough to have dedicated strategy roles, with a person or teams empowered to focus on and drive through the desired change. Most don’t have that luxury. Their resources are too stretched wrestling with a million daily exigencies.
Work on, not in
It’s a similar story for most of us in our personal lives (unless you happen to be Matthew McConaughey).
Each year I come out of the Christmas break, with its opportunity to recuperate and reflect, determined to devote more time to working on, rather than working in, my business. To take the steps to grow and redirect towards where I want it to be. To where I feel I can add value. And then every year I get too busy with the day-to-day stuff.
I know that if I don’t carve out the minutes each day to make progress on the “working on my business” stuff it will never happen. The days will fly by reacting to outside events and other people’s priorities. And another year will pass.
Time to do less, not more?
Resolutions are often about adding something to our lives. More exercise. More adventure. More money. A better job (with more stress).
Stoic author and podcaster Ryan Holiday has written about his resolution last year to do less. So has Four Thousand Weeks author Oliver Burkeman.
It’s a tantalising thought. Maybe we could be more successful – whatever that looks like for each of us – by doing less.
What can you take out of your life that eats up time … that creates frustration … that you struggle to complete or do well … that distracts you from doing the things you enjoy?
Perhaps that’s a resolution we’d all have a better chance of keeping.