Have you made any New Year’s resolutions and if so, how have they gone?
Read an article the other day describing how it turns out that two weeks after the New Year, 50% have given up on their promises. A month later, at the beginning of February, more than 80% have skipped whatever they were thinking about so much at New Year. These are not very encouraging figures.
The difficulty with keeping New Year’s resolutions, I think, is that it’s hard to break the habit that we have around something. This makes it particularly difficult to achieve anything we describe so specifically, such as losing 15 kilos of weight, stopping smoking, exercising five days a week, calling your mum every day, being nicer to co-workers, or whatever it is.
It will be tough to focus so much on changing behaviour quickly at a given time of year, New Year. This is also true in our work. We often take in too much in a short time and expect quick results.
We expect to be able to put in a lot of effort to achieve a big result in a relatively short time.
Or we realise it, and so we don’t make any promises to ourselves at all, nor do we work towards getting better.
Patience and drive
I think we need to be a little more patient. There are rarely quick solutions to problems that have been created over a very long time. If you have gained 15-20 kilos over five or ten years, it takes time to work them off again. If you have created a culture in your business for something like five or ten years, it takes time there too to change that culture.
What is important, in my view, is that we make progress, that is, that we show ourselves and others that we are on the right path towards the goal we have set ourselves. Goals are important because they pull us in the right direction. Goals without momentum, however, become just a dream, as we get nowhere.
Drifting in the wrong direction is not good either, because then we don’t end up where we want to be.
That’s why goals and progress need to work together.
If the majority of New Year’s resolutions fail, what do we do if we still want to change things?
Continuous improvement
I think that instead of going for New Year’s resolutions related to single thing that you want to change. Something you should focus on and promise yourself. Working to make yourself, your life and things around you better. From now and throughout the year.
It’s easier to promise, makes for a softer start and gives us a breeding ground to succeed in anything we really want to improve. To work in a structured way with improvements, it is the very basis for succeeding in really achieving everything you specifically want to improve.
Hope you can promise yourself to constantly work on improvements in your business. After that, please get in touch with me and we can have a short meeting. Then I can help you further. Just reply again to this email.
So happy new year. My promise for the year is to support you in your improvement efforts, now and in the future.
Matts
