January: How Are Your New Year's Resolutions Doing?

So here we are - mid January, and if you are like me in the past, the tiny bit of guilt starts creeping in... because life is taking over Grand New Year's Plans set on January 1st.

It was happening almost every year: setting up grand plans. Feeling a bit guilty in mid-January because there was minimal progress, and by mid-February feeling like plans were distant memories, something that wasn't even visible in the rear-view mirror anymore.

January felt like BIG MONDAY, except Tuesday never bothered to show up.
Every January there was a promise but there was no delivery on this promise.

Than wasn't until a recent chat with my Friend, who casually stated that every year she was taking ENTIRE JANUARY to plan her year.
Wait, what?!?

The longer I thought about it, the more sense it made to me.
We spend good amount of time planning and drafting execution of every project at work. The same applies to home-projects, like bathroom renovation - even if minor.
So why do we expect ourselves to nail plans for 365 days in 1 day (or 1 week, if we are liberal with our time)?
A month is less than 10% of the entire year, and it suddenly seemed logical and fair to spend less that 10% of the year to truly plan it.

On the flip-side, a month is A MONTH: that's a lot of time, entire 31 days that can be used to plan, think-thru and revise; run a quick trial (is exercising 4 times/week realistic or should I scale down to 3/week?), knowing that there is no failing in January: there is testing, gathering information, trying and experimenting and... setting ourselves for success.
We can noodle on our ideas first, we can "sleep on them", give them time to unfold, mature and settle in; we can give them time to come to the surface as something that we really want to work on.

A month gives us time to prepare for what it is that we want to accomplish as well: research and purchase running shoes if we want to start running. Research a new set of colored pencils, if we want to invite more creativity into our lives (spent over a week doing that!!! :D :D :D) We can do that thoughtfully, and without feeling like we are falling behind.

And there one more thing:
In this go-go-go-go world, where everything is dead-line driven, and many dead-lines that we are presented with are, well... unrealistic, it feels like a total luxury, almost decadence (and an act of rebellion!) to take time and be intentional, deliberate and slow about something as rushed as goal-planning on January 1st.
These are our lives. Our goals. Our plans.
And they deserve our time.

Do I have all my ducks in row? - No.
Are things going to change? - Sure.
But I am confident that I will accomplish more this year because some of my goals are already planned across many months. I know what I want to accomplish by end of the March, and what I have to accomplish by the end of October.

So, if your New Year's Plans are already getting dusty and feel like a fading memory that by the end of the month will leave guilty after-taste, take upcoming days to revise your goals - join me on 01/30/25 at 7.00 EST (see newsletter for details).
Maybe you were trying to plan too much?
Less is more.
It is better to plan less and accomplish it, than to set up high goals and fail.

This is such passion of mine that our January get-together will be devoted to this topic.

*** Blog Image: a page from ink+volt planner, one of my favorite planners (https://inkandvolt.com); magenta frame added ***