It is the time for resolving
I like to think about the year ahead, imagine ways to be better, and then figure out how to incorporate activities to get there. In other words: I make New Year’s resolutions.
I’ve got two this year:
Be a better communicator, professionally and personally.
That includes: – Active listening – Asking better questions – Sharing learning
Personally, that means I want to spend more time with friends, hear about their lives and families, and ask for help when I need it. That last one is a particular struggle. My tendency is to share personal struggles and learning after I am through them. Not while I am in the midst of them.
I’m going to set a dinner party goal (12!), a walk with friends goal (also 12), a talk on the phone with siblings and cousins goal (once every three months, each), and a reminder to talk with my family when I’m struggling.
To get there, I need to rebuild the habit of checking in and organizing my thoughts so I even know that I am struggling. For me, that means recommitting to morning pages. I’ve signed up 750 words to help juice that.
Professionally, it means really working on meeting facilitation and managerial 1:1s skills. I need to make them both a place where people can express themselves, stretch, and get the things that help them move their own project and careers forward. I feel like I have put some structure in place over the last year to help with that. I need to keep using and improving it.
It also means working with the garage door open more often. There are different levels for sure. I want to try again to share a weekly update email with the teams I am closest too. I didn’t get very far with that last year and then I had enough misses in a row that I just let it stop. I’m going to restart.
I also want to do more long form writing. This will be internal white papers, operational plans, and external position papers.
It also means structuring more of our work as open source with a strong governance policy. This is another place where my real goal needs to be about learning.
Sweat more.
Literally, not figuratively. I walk a lot but in the last year or two I’ve started sweating less. I need to push myself to sweat more. To do this, I’m going to recommit to running, bike more on around town errands, and do strength training. All of these are easy to set up with specific goals.
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