I’m a sucker for a fresh start. I’m excited to start a new notebook, let alone a new year. This time we’ve got a new decade for goodness sake.... Excitement city.
According to When by Dan Pink. it’s a thing. Time-based milestones like a new year are a temporal landmark, useful for navigating our way through life. On the first day of a week, month, age, anniversary or year, we give ourselves permission to open a new mental account and say goodbye to what no longer serve us. New Year, New Me indeed.
The pattern interrupt of a temporal landmark gives us mental space – a prompt to consider the big picture. Seizing this momentum is a powerful way to spark something new.
In your personal life, you should set an intention. Who do you want to be this year? What would that person have to do? What should you stop doing, to be that person?
I love Dr Jason Fox's One Word initiative for this. My 2020 word is soar. I want to lift myself and others to new heights, to connect and grow, to seize momentum, but without the grit, and thrust that the last few years have needed.
At work, you should kick off the year with fresh eyes, while everyone still has them. Put the time in your team’s calendar now. For bonus points, schedule your strategy meetings and retreats for the full year in one fell swoop. Senior leadership teams should be scheduling in a 2-3 day reset at least three times in 2020 - book it in now.
I’ve seized this temporal landmark in my business to refocus and gear up for 2020. Inspired by Digby Scott’s Year by Design approach, my year is all mapped out on the wall, with my favourite clients, holidays, strategy and development days locked in.
I committed to weekly blogs in July 2018, scrapping my existing database and starting from scratch. The first Wednesday Wisdom went out to just 28 people. 18 months later, I haven't missed a single week and there's now over 3,000 of you who get the email - and it’s climbing fast! In 2020, I’m still going to blog - but only once a month. I’m going to refocus that weekly energy into deeper thinking and useful resources for subscribers to my email list. I’ll be making a new resource available to readers every month - for free! - instead. Like everyone, I can do anything, but not everything. Choosing to soar means letting other things go – even the good stuff that serves me well.
More on this approach here.