A New Year’s resolution: To stop making resolutions
Happy New Year! Did you make any resolutions? Have you already broken them?
I felt a strong resistance to setting resolutions this year, and it took me some time to unpack why. First off, I think it’s because resolutions are usually deficit focused, directing all of our attention to what’s not working rather than what is. Given what we’ve collectively been through in 2020 and 2021, none of us needs an additional guilt-trip about underperforming.
Are you feeling ‘22? (Photo by Moritz Knoringer on Unsplash)
But the resistance also stems from realism - because we all know that setting a goal or resolution is the easy part. Actually working toward that in a meaningful way, that’s the challenge.
There’s a great quote from James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits:
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
This holds true for individuals and organisations. Reading organisational strategy or policy documents is a fast-track to cynicism, as each shiny new doc heralds the dawn of a new era in which people will suddenly succeed in delivering a quality, customer-focused product or service, working collaboratively with colleagues, protecting health and safety…
The strategy or policy might even set out some key performance indicators to see whether the dial has moved. But there’s often a huge ‘missing middle’ between the goals we set and the measures we track. That’s where “the rubber meets the road”, “theory becomes practice”, “strategy turns operations”, or shit gets real.
Getting scientific
In my humble opinion, teams and individuals fall short here for a couple of key reasons.
We don’t clearly define the problem we’re solving or the opportunity we’re responding to.
So we throw everything at it, and try to do too much.
And we expect instant results. When we don’t get them, we give up.
That sounds a bit dire, but we may find a way forward if we think less like optimistic motivational speakers, and more like scientists and systems thinkers.
Scientists put forward hypotheses, that this cause will lead to this effect.
They endeavour to test one thing at a time, so they can see what’s having an impact and what’s not.
They observe what happens over a reasonable timeframe.
And systems thinkers add value by looking at the wider impacts of a change - including any unintended consequences.
When scientists don’t get the result they expect, they don’t give up. ‘Failure’ is information, it means it’s time to tweak the approach and try something new. Like Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
When applied in our own lives, this curious mindset can help to squash out the self-judgement that creeps in when we set goals that we don’t reach.
In an organisational context, curiosity is at the heart of a learning and improvement culture, rather than a blame culture.
Finding the gold
This ‘process focused’ way of life came to light for me this Summer, while holidaying in Napier and Queenstown.
In Napier I found Stephen Covey’s classic book “First Things First” in the second hand bookshop, in which he talks about ‘The Law of the Farm’, or the idea that “In agriculture, we can easily see and agree that natural laws and principles govern the work and determine the harvest” (p.54). In short, the processes determine the result.
It’s similar when panning for gold, which I tried in Arrowtown. I panned as a child but had no idea what ‘laws’ were operating, so I just randomly shook the pan and hoped to find a nugget of gold at the bottom. But this trip, a guide explained that gold is dense, and sits at the bottom of the pan with the heavy black sand. The goal then is to get all the large rocks and brown sand out, so it’s possible to see the gold amongst the black. Once I followed the process, I got the result - a few gold flakes of my very own.
(Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash)
Of course, the laws of farming and gold panning are pretty clear. In contrast, the laws of ‘the good life’ or the effective organisation are more contentious and variable across time, place and social setting.
But what we do know with some certainty is that at an individual and collective level, we seek meaning and mattering. Connection and contribution. And a great many of our goals, resolutions and strategies are aiming at these ultimate ends.
So - how can get there, if we aren’t setting resolutions or putting out sexy strategic soundbites?
The secret sauce: priorities and habits
While this is an oversimplification, it’s a great start if organisations define clear strategic priorities that influence daily decisions and bigger-ticket choices. These priorities need to be really explicit about the trade offs that the organisation is willing to make. (As the saying goes, strategy is deciding what not to do.)
For individuals, I think there’s value in getting clear on your priorities, and then seeking to build habits that will move you to where you want to go.
In terms of priorities, you’ll ideally have just a few. As Greg McKeown explains in ‘Essentialism’:
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities”.
Alongside priorities, habits are the real engine of behaviour change, because we perform them consistently and with a relatively small amount of mental energy. As Dan Pink recently noted, “Consistency trumps intensity”. Or to throw in an older saying, you are what you repeatedly do.
One fun hack for habit change is to ‘reverse engineer’ your successes. In other words, think of a habit or behaviour that you regularly perform, without too much drama or effort. Why does it work? What are the ‘critical success factors’ that help you to make change? Do you need external accountability? A time-based prompt? A visual cue? A deadline to work to?
In my own life - the best advice I’ve received in this area didn’t come from a self-help book but from an antenatal class. The facilitator recommended that each parent carve out some ‘me time’ during the week, as a way of retaining our sense of self and our mental health, during the challenging early years of parenting. Since then, I’ve enjoyed ‘Saturday morning me time’ for 4.5 years, and that time has enabled me to read, reflect, write, start a business, and generally take some introvert time out.
If you’re looking to change your habits this year, you might want to start by carving out a regular slot of ‘me time’. And if you’re at a loss about how to use that time, you may enjoy the following reads:
‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear
‘Switch: How to change things when change is hard’ by Chip and Dan Heath
‘Essentialism’ by Greg McKeown
We’re an optimistic bunch, us homo sapiens. For about 2000 years we’ve set resolutions in January, a month named after the two-faced Roman god, Janus, who can look backward and forward at the same time. Reflection and resolution. These are wonderful practices - they could just benefit from some slight tweaking around the edges.
“My new year’s resolution was to quit all my bad habits. Then it occurred to me - nobody likes a quitter.”
Have a great January!