What is Your Plan for Next Year? What Will You Make Different?
In the article I posted last week — What Are You Planning to Achieve in the New Year? I provided some ideas on planning for your specific perspective and role. I also started that article with a thought process on this year that we are beginning to close out and some of the silver-linings that could come from what has been an unthinkable experience for many people. Even if you did not suffer from the illness directly or indirectly, the social unrest, or political overload — this year will be a marker in history for almost all businesses. Some good, some bad, some catastrophic. With that in mind, beyond just a plan for the new year ahead, what are you challenging yourself to do differently? How can you move from a year of chaos, uncertainty, and challenges to one that provides growth, development, and success that you can build on for the future?
Using time at the end of any year for reflection and planning ahead is a good practice to be in. This year, it might be even more important. One of the best ways to both reflect and look forward is to start with what is commonly referred to as a start, stop, and continue exercise. I have added a little to them and it worked out to create a neat quadrant approach that can be applied to almost any situation. It certainly works well for taking a personal inventory of your situation, habits, and actions.
Complete a personal BEST activity
The quadrants for planning may sound familiar, but ensure you are looking at all aspects: Begin, End, Sustain, and Transform.
Begin - is something missing that I should be doing that I am not doing today?
End - what activities are non-value added and I should stop doing?
Sustain - what activities make sense as it and I need to continue to do them?
Transform - what am I doing today, that needs to be done, but could be done more efficiently or effectively?
This does not have to be complicated to set up. Take a blank piece of paper and divide into quadrants and label each with the items above. Then just write in your thoughts and notes. You can do this with old fashioned pen and paper or set up a basic Word doc with each of the categories as headers for a section.
When complete, take a look back and ensure you haven’t missed anything. I would even recommend setting this aside for a couple of days and then reviewing again. This can ensure you haven’t missed anything or categorized something in a way that might not make sense. It can sometimes be difficult to think about sustaining versus transforming. It can even be hard to have several things in the ‘end’ quadrant - especially if those are not items that you have fully in your control.
Think of what is possible, not the obstacles
As you are working through your exercise, begin with the assumption that everything can be done. No barriers are in your way. Otherwise, you will spend as much time trying to justify, defend, or explains why something isn’t possible as you will on figuring out what you want to do. Work with the assumption that anything could be possible.
Once you have everything down on the page, you can take a look at what might be easy, hard, or somewhere in between. While doing this part of the exercise though - shift your mindset back to the idea that everything is possible and ask yourself this question for EVERY item on your list:
“What would it take in order to make this (insert item) true? “
I love this mindset.
This works for every quadrant as well. If you want to end some things, you can still ask yourself, ‘what would it take to make this happen?’ That may require coordinating with other people, your boss, or just turning something off.
The other benefit of this approach - it begins to build the actions you will need to take to make each item happen. It is not just a mindset exercise, it is functional as well.
Remember, just because the calendar changes dates doesn’t mean everything magically changes around you. Transitioning into a new year will take time, and we will continue to feel the effects of COVID-19, the political pressures, and social situations for (at a minimum) months ahead. But that doesn’t mean we cannot begin to take the steps we need to make for ourselves in the immediate-term. Nothing changes around us without us first making the changes for ourselves. Use your plan, work through the obstacles, and commit to making the year ahead a success for yourself and those around you.
How will you make the time to build your 2021 plan?
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