Strategizing Life for a Meaningful New Year
We’re about to turn the last page of our 2024 calendar to make way for our 2025 one. Most likely, you’ve set some new year resolutions that you’d like to pursue in the coming year. I certainly have! One of my resolutions is to write more for my blog, be more active on LinkedIn, and engage more on my other socials. And, this is just one aspect of how I have been strategizing life for the new year. Well, let’s see how it goes (fingers crossed)!
Some Statistics on New Year Resolutions
I dug up some statistics about new year resolutions, and Lark Allen of Drive Research shared insights about how Americans fared with their 2024 resolutions:
- 38.5% of U.S. adults set new year resolutions annually, but only 9% successfully keep them.
- 23% abandon their resolutions within the first week, while only 36% make it past the first month, and most give up by mid-February.
While I couldn’t find similar statistics for Filipinos, I’d bet we’re not doing any better compared to Americans.
Allen also highlighted the most popular new year resolutions among Americans:
- 79% focus on improving health.
- 6% aim to travel more.
- Among Americans aged 18 to 24, 53% intend to exercise more, and 51% plan to eat healthier.
- 58% of those aged 25 to 44 prioritize budgeting as their main objective.
- 57% focus on improving personal relationships.
- 55% aspire to perfect a new hobby.
Leaders and New Year Resolutions
When it comes to leaders setting resolutions, Jason Walker, PsyD, PhD., an associate professor at Adler University, suggests that new year resolutions often set leaders up for failure. That’s because:
- They lack specifics to measure achievement.
- They’re overly ambitious and unrealistic without clear steps.
- They don’t foster accountability to drive progress.
- They aren’t aligned with roles and values, being driven by external pressures instead.
Dr. Walker advises leaders to take a better approach by:
- Choosing a theme for the year.
- Starting with habits rather than promises.
- Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals.
- Finding a mentor, coach, or colleague for accountability and celebrating small wins.
An Approach for Strategizing Life
Personally, I believe setting new year resolutions isn’t enough. This annual tradition is a limited way to improve your life. Instead, we should try strategizing life much like organizations develop strategies. Rainer Strack, Susanne Dyrchs, and Allison Bailey of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) advocate using strategic thinking to achieve this. Their approach includes seven steps to guide your life strategy:
- How do I define a great life? – Identify what a fulfilling life means to you.
- What is my life purpose? – Consider what you’re good at, your core values, and what motivates you.
- What is my life vision? – Envision the person you want to be in a few years.
- How do I assess my life portfolio? – Evaluate your current life circumstances.
- What can I learn from benchmarks? – Identify individuals or examples to learn from.
- What portfolio choices can I make? – Decide on improvements for your life.
- How can I ensure successful, sustained life change? – Determine actions to maintain progress.
The Six Strategic Life Areas (SLAs)
What’s particularly interesting about this approach is step four, which involves assessing six strategic life areas (SLAs). Each SLA is broken into smaller units called strategic life units (SLUs):
- Relationships:
- Significant other – time with a partner.
- Family – time with parents, children, or siblings.
- Friendships – time with close friends.
- Body, mind, and spirituality:
- Physical health – exercise.
- Mental health – mindfulness or meditation.
- Spirituality – religion, belief, or philosophy.
- Community and society:
- Community – memberships in associations or clubs.
- Societal engagement – volunteering or activism.
- Job, learning, and finances:
- Career – work or business activities.
- Education – further studies or self-improvement courses.
- Finances – savings, investments, or retirement planning.
- Interests and entertainment:
- Hobbies – personal interests.
- Online entertainment – social media or streaming.
- Offline entertainment – road trips, vacations, or events.
- Personal care:
- Physiological needs – eating, sleeping, or intimacy.
- Activities of daily living – household chores, errands.
To evaluate each SLU, rate your satisfaction (0–10) and its importance to you (0–10). For example, if you’re very dissatisfied with your career, you might score it a 3 for satisfaction. If your career is critical to you, you’d score it a 9 for importance.
You can plot these scores on a two-dimensional Strategic Life Portfolio (SLP) matrix, with satisfaction on the horizontal axis and importance on the vertical. For SLUs, allocate time proportionately and draw circles of relative sizes around each point on the grid. For instance, if you dedicate 40% of your time to your career, the circle around that SLU will be larger.
Using your SLP matrix, you can identify areas to adjust your time and actions. Reallocate time from less important SLUs to more significant ones, address dissatisfaction, and refine your priorities.
Let’s Strategize Life Together
Though creating a Strategic Life Portfolio matrix requires effort, it’s a powerful tool for aligning your actions with your life purpose and vision. Strategic thinking and strategic personal leadership ensure long-term fulfillment, far surpassing traditional new year resolutions.
If you’re ready to embark on this journey, why not join me on January 18, 2025, for an online workshop on strategizing life this year? Absolutely FREE! Let me know in the comments if you’re interested. Whether one person or one hundred joins, I’ll set it up.
Happy New Year! I wish you all the best for 2025!