New Year’s Resolutions. We’ve all made them. They rarely stuck. Apparently it’s cool to say they’re not cool anymore.
Call me an optimist, but I think the basic idea is a good one – as long as you don’t go overboard but instead keep your resolutions reasonable. No – you can’t learn French by February. Yes – you can close your eyes and take 5 deep breaths a day.
Ultimately, I’m a fan of trying to get just a tiny bit better each day and I think some bite-sized New Year’s resolutions might help me keep moving in the right direction. So here goes! Here are my Fracture-focused new year’s resolutions for 2019.
Know everyone’s name at Fracture
I’m starting off with a bang here, and this is a big one to me. Fracture’s growing and we’ve got around 75 people on the team. That’s a lot of names to remember! Especially as we keep adding more people. It’s rather embarrassing to admit that I don’t know everyone’s name, but hey – there you have it. I’m being as honest as possible and don’t want to hold back.
We’ve all had those awkward conversations where you don’t know someone’s name and you greet them with the ever-handy “Hey…you!“. I’m over that. Addressing people by their names is a simple act of respect and dignity – these people are working hard to help me achieve our vision. I should know their names and they deserve to be recognized in this most basic of ways. I’m going to aim to learn 1 additional name per week.
Check sales volumes only twice a day
Years ago I got into the habit of updating the “orders received” screen constantly. We were just getting out of some dark and incredibly lean times and it was gratifying to refresh the order screen and see new orders coming in. The thrill of getting orders was exhilarating and motivating.
Unfortunately, now I’m addicted. I probably refresh that screen once every hour, maybe more. But it’s lost its novelty and now is just unhealthy. I’ll have a mini-mood swing based on how many orders we’ve received so far; I’ll get grumpy if it’s not where I want it to be, and I’ll ride a mini-high if the order volume is looking good.
This habit doesn’t do me any good – I can’t impact sales on a daily basis – and I need to kick it. But I know it’s hard to go cold turkey and quit – so I want to check sales only twice a day. Baby steps.
Have pen meet paper every day
No – I’m not anti-technology and I don’t yearn for the days of quills, scrolls, and messenger pigeons. It’s just that I really appreciate the written word, I like writing, and I think it’s a beautiful art. The act of writing actually calms me down and is almost meditative as I strive to articulate my thoughts, emotions, strategies, and feelings.
Over the past 9 years I’ve actually kept a business journal the entire time, going through a motley collection of different notebooks and journals. It’s probably one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever done – I’ve created this really organic, written, personal commentary of Fracture’s growth through my eyes, and I love it.
As Fracture gets busier and busier I find larger gaps between entries in my notebook, and I don’t like that trend. So I’m going to commit to jotting down something, anything, in my notebook every day. It could be as simple as a random doodle, sketch, scribble, drawing – whatever. I want pen to meet paper, every day.
So there it is – a small, short list of things that I think I can tackle in 2019. I know if I can be successful building in these habits, I can use that foundation and keep scaling on top of it. If you’ve got any suggestions on how I can stick to the list, I’m all ears! Happy New Year to you, and may 2019 be at least just a little bit better than 2018.
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