One of the biggest mysteries known to mankind is where does December go? One second we are in late November beginning to come up with ideas for presents for loved ones, then it's back to business, last minute end-of-year deadlines and the usual round of office parties and social events. We wake up and it's suddenly December 20th, with everything else to be done in two or three days, as the pressure gauge begins to hit the red zone.
It's totally imaginary, of course, but we always seem to lose a month in December each year, just when we probably need some extra time the most, but there are only 24 hours in a day and there's nothing much we can do about that. In any case, I discussed the "Christmas craziness" at work in last week's post, so naturally this time we come to that other perennial of the festive season and end of year - resolutions for the next 12 months!
I have never, ever been a fan of New Year's Eve, even when younger. There's something I find actually counter-productive about it, and I think it's due to all the fuss that's made over it and how one is expected to party like it's 1999, and put aside any/all of the resolutions that one felt better for having made earlier. People resolve, then go nuts, then wake shell shocked in no fit condition to resolve anything, with the Christmas dream over and the cold, hard reality of January 1st staring them in the face. The day is built up so much, that just about any day coming after it simply has to feel like a downer, right?
It seems we don't learn from our mistakes, and so we continue to make futile resolutions that are so easy to make on December 30th or 31st, but so difficult to stick to , even by January 3rd or 4th! Clearly, it's the easiest thing in the world to proclaim one will stop smoking in 2015, then head out to a massive party with extra smokes in store to make up for all the smokes one will miss next year, and suddenly mere days into the new year, one is, well, smoking again - or smoking still, may be the more accurate way of putting it.
I don't know why us humanoids insist on setting overly ambitious goals for ourselves, when it's been proven that it doesn't work, instead of setting more reasonable and attainable goals and sticking to them. I mean, how often do you hear someone exclaim that they are gonna quit smoking, in comparison to how frequently you hear someone state that they are going to smoke less? If one could do something less for a few years in a row, who knows, it might be more easily dropped - permanently - rather than failing repeatedly at the cold turkey approach.
Putting aside bad habits in our personal lives, I think we can benefit from a similar approach in the workplace. Why resolve to make massive changes in particular aspects of our work performance which tend to slip away frighteningly quickly upon facing the horrors of the office in the first week of January? It would be much more productive to examine honestly what things we were good at and did well at, and commit to focusing on doing more of that, and correspondingly facing our weaknesses and commit to them manifesting less in our day at the office. If we set the impossible goal of pleasing everyone all of the time, then surely we are destined to fail. Conversely, if we are determined to please more people than we did last year, then that may well become reality.
The whole new year resolution and new year party thing seems to be a case of putting off till tomorrow what can be done today, and it's always better to do it today. One doesn't need to wait till December 31st each year to try to improve ourselves; if we mean it, it can be started today, even if today is in summer of autumn. The sooner we begin to act on having thought it or even said it, the more chance there is that we do mean it and will execute it, thus increasing our chances of actually succeeding at it!
There is an added advantage to taking a more ongoing project management-style approach to our resolutions and will power - one doesn't awaken at midday on January 1st feeling like one did die in 1999, with all sorts of added pressure on one's shoulders from what one promised the wife or husband, kids, friends and colleagues just the day before! Now that surely makes January 1st a much less depressing affair, converting it into a day that requires a lot less resolve and one filled with significantly more optimism and less regret from the night before.
Keep it real, keep the improvements realistic, and don't be overly hard on yourself for not (yet!) being the perfect you - this is my recipe for a healthy assessment of the past year and being primed to eagerly face the new year ahead. But luckily that's still two weeks ahead of us, and for now it's all about some serious R&R after a quite spectacular year. So on that note, this is NVNG signing off for 2014 - I will no doubt be back in touch in early 2015 - and until then, happy holidays!
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