HALF TIME THOUGHTS, EPISODE 28: NEW YEAR SOLUTIONS

Do you subscribe to the annual tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions?

I’ve never found it particularly helpful.

A few years back, my wife convinced the kids and me to take a different approach. We each wrote a set of goals to which we would hold ourselves accountable as the new year unfolded.

It worked quite well in 2018. We had a lot of fun at year’s end, ruthlessly evaluating our own progress and – somewhat less ruthlessly – critiquing and supporting each other.

COVID threw a wrench in the works.

Our lack of goal setting for 2021 is a direct indicator of how uncertain we felt about our lives as 2020 wound down.

This year, I’m determined to do better.

I’ll encourage my wife and kids to pick up the goal-setting neo-tradition, even though there is still a preponderance of uncertainty sloshing around our daily lives.

Without goals, we’re left “doing our best” – sailing without a Plimsoll line to tell us whether our ship is cruising along fine or gradually sinking.

I’m also taking a different approach to personal goalsetting.

My biggest issue with New Year’s resolutions lies in the ‘resolution’ part.?

As the calendar rolls over, we profess a firm – perhaps renewed – determination to make something happen that has hitherto proven elusive.?

However, the word “resolve” comes from Latin roots that mean to apply force to loosen something. That transitioned through a Middle English meaning of “disintegration” to a modern sense of breaking apart a problem so that it becomes more tractable.

There’s a lot more to “resolving” than upping the determination level.

To avoid any ambiguity, I’m removing the “re-“ and talking directly about solutions.

What follows are my New Year Solutions, each addressing a challenge that I’ve observed while reflecting on recent years’ struggles, accomplishments, and disappointments.

Opportunities … Making the Most of Them

Challenge:?Logical restrictions on movement, gathering, and social interaction mean fewer opportunities to experience life beyond my day-to-day routine.

Solution:?Apart from the obvious “get my arse off the couch”, it’s imperative to take advantage of the viable opportunities that remain.?

Doing things can seem inconvenient, expensive, and even unnecessary.

Why would I give up my Friday evening for that??Is it worth that much??What difference does it make whether I go or not? (Do I really want to see those people?)

Yes, yes, and aargh – it’s the experiences that enrich our lives and generate memories we can enjoy for years to come.

The gravitational pull exerted by our status quo is unfathomably strong.?It constantly pulls us back to doing what we’ve always done – which, of late, is less (and less varied) than it used to be.

COVID has persisted long enough for us to establish a new, diminished status quo, which makes it even more important to break away and do … stuff.

Mission … As in, Focusing on What Matters

Challenge:?So. Many. Distractions.?As a business owner and partner, I’m constantly pulled in (what feels like) 101 directions.?I consider myself better-than-average at triaging the situation, prioritizing things, and avoiding overwhelm but important stuff still gets left unattended.

Solution:?I doubt there’s a true solution here – much like finding that ephemeral “work-life balance” is a never-ending quest – but I’m going to redouble my efforts.

Getting shit done is one of my strong points.

Between my digital task manager (currently ClickUp ) and the handy little desktop dry-erase board that sits between my keyboard and monitors (one of the best gifts ever), I operate on the organized side of the human distribution.

Nevertheless, what I cross off the list doesn’t always equate to what I wish I’d accomplished by the time my head hits the pillow.

This is a deeply psychological game.

It’s too easy to breeze through things that are, well, easy, thinking that getting on a roll will naturally lead to completing more onerous tasks lurking further down the list.

(Note to self: Why are they further down the list to begin with?)?

It’s also too easy to click on a task and bump the due date out a couple of days.?Then a couple more.?Then into next month.

These are both habits that I need to catch in the moment and hold myself accountable for rejecting.

Invest … In Myself

Challenge:?With a business to run, two kids to support (one a freshman in college, the other a freshman in high school), a house to manage, and a steady stream of inbound requests for my time, self-care and wellness become imperiled.

Solution:?This is almost a subset of the previous challenge, focusing on what matters.?However, I don’t include self-care tasks on my to-do lists (perhaps I should?) and frequently forget to schedule them on my calendar (which I definitely should).?

I’m tired of being told to give stuff up.

Constrain work hours, less screen time, fewer alcoholic beverages, smaller portions … Egads!

I’m also tired of being told to add more when there’s clearly no room at the inn.

Spend more time on exercise, mindfulness, breathing, journaling, gratitude … eat more vegetables, fruits, grains, Omega-3’s, offal … oh, and drink more water.?Way more water.

I need an attitude adjustment here.

My priorities are tilted too far toward getting shit done (see above) and as a result I weigh 25 pounds too much (being kind to myself) and my brain runs like the CPU in a five-year-old PC trying to juggle Zoom, Chrome, and eleven other mission-critical apps.

Time to start treating myself as a client to be satisfied and a task list to be conquered.

Small steps, less sacrifice and reduction, more positive investment.

And drinking lots more water.

Control … What I Can Control

Challenge:?It’s a big, bad world out there.?Somehow, it seems bigger and badder than it did a few years ago.?Mutating viruses, would-be-dictators, regressive state and national legislation, inflation, overwhelmed healthcare systems – the list goes on.?And it’s all being amplified by mainstream and social media, all the time.?How can I not be distracted?

Solution:?Tuning it all out isn’t the solution.?That becomes life in a bubble, which can leave one dangerously underinformed, unable to engage in social discourse, and ill-prepared for situations where it’s important to be proactive.?Instead, I’m committed to a modified OODA loop to help me keep external events in perspective and control what I can control.

Developed by former U.S. Air Force strategist, Colonel John Boyd, the OODA Loop is designed to help leaders (more specifically, in Boyd’s case, fighter pilots) function amid confusing or chaotic situations.?Sounds perfect for daily life in 2022, right?

OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.

In my world, this translates to:

• Observe:?Spend a limited amount of time each day on mainstream and social media channels ingesting their version(s) of what’s happening in the world.?
• Orient:?Use tools like allsides.com to avoid the inherent biases introduced by each channel.?I also make a point of reading BBC.com as well as various US sites, partly because I have family there but mainly because they offer a different (and, arguably, less-biased) viewpoint on US and world affairs.
• Decide:?The key step!?What, if any, of the latest “news” is relevant to me??Most of it can either be ignored or filed away as general knowledge (you never know when a game of Trivial Pursuits will crop up).?A few things actually matter, having the potential to impact daily life, my health and wealth, and major life decisions like where to live, how to earn a living, and how to guide my kids.
• Act:?Beyond ditching most of the noise and filing the rest in appropriate parts of my neo-cortex, I can choose to act on whatever else I’ve learned.?This might mean shopping for a new mask, starting a spreadsheet on places I’d prefer to live outside Texas, or adding mustard greens to my grocery list.

What OODA doesn’t include are things like panic, crafting nightmare scenarios where the US economy implodes, paranoia about twenty simultaneous conspiracies, or making knee-jerk changes to my daily life.

It also forces me to consider what’s within my control and what’s not.

Time spent worrying about things I can’t control is an egregious waste of my most precious resource.

Failing to control things that I can is complacent, and I deserve whatever consequences ensue.

Radical … As in Candor and Transparency

Challenge:?A nasty side effect of being a passenger on the societal train through COVID is that I’ve become less willing to express my feelings and beliefs.?There are too many nut-jobs out there, willing to lynch someone for taking a vaccine (or a knee) or having a different point of view on some socio-political issue.?Keeping my thoughts to myself leaves me feeling frustrated and hypocritical and has led to misunderstandings and unwelcome surprises when dealing with friends, family, and other folk.

Solution:?Stay true to my direct, honest, sometimes blunt self – albeit counterbalanced by that great idiom: discretion is the better part of valor.

As espoused by the billionaire hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio, in Principles: Life and Work , radical transparency creates a culture that is direct and honest in its communication.?

I’m not running a hedge fund and I don’t have ambitions to change the culture of my city, state, or country, but I can do my part by acting how I would prefer others to act.

Obfuscating one’s beliefs, ideas, and motives can be a valuable self-defense mechanism when surrounded by hostile members of a different ideology, but it’s not a helpful way to live your day-to-day life.

You might not like my belief system but it’s who I am, the product of my fifty-plus years of upbringing and life experience.?It makes sense to me in just the same way that your belief system makes sense to you.

Rather than keeping my beliefs and opinions to myself for fear of starting conflict, I’m inclined to share them with you in the spirit of debate and mutual understanding.

Of course, if your personal accessory of choice is an AR-15, I might conclude that you’re not interested in hearing my point of view, which is a pity.?

(I know several responsible, intellectual, pro-democracy gun owners.?Unfortunately, the right that they legitimately practice has been overshadowed – I’d say rendered more harmful than good – by others who would use it to destabilize society and obtain or retain power illegitimately.)

Old … as in, out with the old

Challenge:?I own too much stuff, much of it obsolete.?From clothes that I’ll never wear again to duplicate household utensils to general bric-a-brac to habits formed in earlier chapters of my life. I’m overdue a dose of Kondo-ism.?For several years, I’ve neglected the perennial Spring Clean waiting for things to be better next year.?

Solution:?It’s time to declutter and replace.?Things will get better when I take stock, eliminate that which no longer sparks joy (the heart of the KonMari Method ), and create more white space for new things to emerge.

This extends beyond just removing unwanted possessions – which I shall donate wherever I can – and decluttering my home.

I’m increasingly bothered by consumerism and excessive consumption.?I want to reduce my footprint (loosely defined, more work needed on this in 2022) and do my part to support humanity’s adaptation toward sustainable existence.

A big part of that will be getting rid of old habits (of the mental model kind, I haven’t started dressing like a monk quite yet) to make room for new ones.

And the first step, as always, is simply to get started.?I’m taking aim at my closet in January.

New … as in, in with the new

Challenge:?As you’ve probably gathered, I feel bogged down by what’s happened over the past 2-3 years. ?That’s not to say I haven’t made progress – far from it.?I’ve accomplished a lot, much of it in collaboration with my wife and business partner.?But it’s been a period of too much rear guard and too much waiting to see.?

Solution:?As befits a New Year, there are several things I want to start doing.?Did I mention drinking more water??But getting started is simultaneously difficult and easy.?On the bigger stuff, it’s difficult to break out of paralysis-by-analysis and take the plunge.?On the smaller stuff, it’s too easy to keep saying “tomorrow”.?The solution, I hope, is to clear away the wishy-wash and get specific.

Because my wife and I run a business from home, our work-life situation is inextricably entwined.?Many of the things I want to start, stop, or change are related to that interconnectedness.

On a purely work note, I’ll be launching and marketing new products.?This is a major step-out from what has hitherto been a pure-play service business.?We’ve recognized that, to continue growing our business, we need to productize something that can scale beyond the consulting hours that my wife and I contribute.?I’m leading that charge, excited about what we’re developing, and eager to see it grow as we build it up throughout the year.?Stay tuned!

To amplify the liminal space between work and the rest of life, we’ll be taking on fewer new clients and fewer projects.?

That’s a tough call when winning clients and projects is the lifeblood of our business and we’ve spent the past two years establishing our credibility to the point where new opportunities arrive with something approaching regularity.

However, my wife and I recently ran analyses of how our time is spent. That brought us face-to-face with the harsh reality that 24-hour days and 168-hour weeks present: there simply aren’t enough hours to do everything we’ve been doing and all the things we want to be doing.

At heart, this is a boundaries challenge.?So, new year, new boundaries.

Perhaps the hardest of these will be to say no to more opportunities and politely extricate ourselves from some of the things we said yes to in the past.

I also need to get better at spotting the commitments that are likely to creep, insidiously eating their way through my time like crabgrass spreading through the lawn.?

Whenever I hear myself saying it’ll “just take a few hours”, I must heed the alarm in my head.

Perhaps the biggest “new” of them all needs to be that new attitude.

By the time the ball drops on 2023, I want to look back on a year where I reinvested in myself, especially my health and wellbeing.

Ten, Nine, Eight…

And there you have it.?Seven solutions that I hope will make my New Year a great one.

I even built in an easy way of remembering them.?Hint: scroll back up and take the first letter of each subheading :)

As I sign off, I hope 2022 is a brilliant year for us all.

We’re overdue a year where the memes are about forward progress, community, increasing enjoyment, feeling rested, and generally being more positive about life.

My plan is to make that my reality, whatever the weather (as Brits like to say).

I wish you and yours a safe, healthy, and successful New Year!?

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