Ah .. December. It comes around every year and it’s such a full and busy month. On the personal side it’s a time for holiday celebration. It’s a month filled with family and friends. It’s a time for gift giving and receiving. Hectic and still fun.
And then there is our life at work and the jobs we have. In some cases it means stepping on the accelerator to close sales or close out projects before the year end. In a general sense it means wrapping things up needed to complete the year. And often, it involves finalizing the plan for your company, department, or position for next year. Combine the personal and the business portions of our lives and we have one jam-packed year end … guaranteed!
There’s one activity that many, many people add to the mix of December busy-ness and that involves making their New Year resolutions or the 
individual’s list of things one ‘vows’ to do in the coming year. What has always fascinated me is that as fast as some are to announce their resolutions, they seem just as willing to tell you how quickly they fell off the table. Thus I have come to view such resolutions as some form of a wish list … things that one might really want to accomplish. However, with little planning around it as to what needs to happen to achieve such resolves, the likelihood it happening is greatly reduced … as in slim to none. Thus, this is the key reason that I have not ever engaged in this practice
That is until now. You see … making a plan for things I’d like to accomplish ‘next year’ makes sense. I just don’t want to make it a dream list on no real foundation. So this year I vowed to attempt to make my business related resolutions in a way that would make achieving them realistic. Here’s the plan that seems to be working for me as related to the work I do and it just might have a payoff for you as well.
During the first half of this month seriously evaluate your job and how you feel you performed.
- What new skills did you learn and what did you do to learn them?
- With your new learning, what does that enable you to do in terms of taking on more responsibility or becoming involved in new projects?
- What weaknesses did you discover about your abilities as related to your work and what have you done or will you need to do to turn them into strengths going forward?
- And for the dream part … one year from now where would you like to be that would reflect positive growth in knowledge, performance and … (why not?) … income?
Taking adequate time to contemplate these questions and develop real and meaningful answers is key. With them, I believe you will now have the basis for making meaty resolutions that are based on a foundation you’ve built up to now and the plan to grow beyond. Certainly that’s my intention. I want to avoid being a ‘fantasizer’ and, rather, become a fanatic driven to achieve my resolutions. No wish list for me. It’s about what I did by intention.
Granted, December is one busy month for so many reasons. And yet, I’m determined to make time for doing the ground work for a meaningful New Year’s resolution list. Next December, the payoff will be looking back on the gains I made personally in my work and credit the fact that I endeavored to make resolutions that well beyond ‘wishes’. Care to join me?
Mike Dorman
