2nd Feb 2009
Time for Groundhog Day Resolutions – Part 1
Following my previous post in which I explained my reasons for making Groundhog Day resolutions in the style of David Seah, rather than the more traditional New Year Resolutions (remember those?), it’s now time to make these resolutions public. Whilst I very much doubt anybody has much interest in reading about my resolutions, the simple act of publishing them will hopefully act as a catalyst to actually following up on these resolutions and making them a reality.
Some of my resolutions are very specific to my individual situation and/or businesses and so where it’s appropriate I have omitted some of the more particular details – for both privacy and commercial reasons.
I have a number of resolutions I am not quite ready to publish yet – but I have highlighted two items that I am prepared to talk about more openly and discuss with anybody who has an opinion…
Do more of what I enjoy/is a positive influence and less of what I don’t enjoy/is a negative influence.
This is something of a no-brainer in many ways but despite it featuring in many of my plans over recent years I still don’t seem to have the hang of this one. Running your own business at any time can be a stressful business and quite often you can end up in a situation where you take the work you are offered because work = money = survival.
I’m well aware that in some cases I’ve ended up either working on projects that just weren’t core to my skills or indeed that the negative effect of the work has had a knock on effect on other areas of my business. This year I want to start being brave enough to recognise and weed out the negative influences so that I can bring in more of the positive influences that will inevitably enrich both my business and personal life.
Caught in the middle of a global recession this is going to be a tough one to force myself to put in to action – but if resolutions were easy then there would be no challenge…
Design and implement a balanced long term work/life strategy by the end of 2009.
I am currently involved in two diverse businesses – a web development/consulting business and a fledgling e-tailer which I run with my wife. These businesses both perform reasonably well and provide us with an income – but they don’t exactly offer us long term financial security at this point.
The basics of world economics dictate that just keeping businesses running is enough of a challenge in 2009 but it’s also a stark reminder of the fact that businesses need to be able to withstand sustained difficult times. Everybody now realises that the seemingly endless growth of recent years may not be such a fixture in the future. For me, this has crystallised in my mind the fact that I need to start thinking about how these businesses can provide a longer term stability for myself and my family.
The first step on this path is to start to work on a strategy for how I can balance earning a good living, providing for the future, watching my daughter grow up and enjoying life along the way. This strategy is likely to require some difficult, perhaps seemingly painful, decisions on both the home and work front as we work out which areas of our business are sustainable and attractive and which are perhaps less beneficial to us.
Again this resolution seems like a tall order but for me one of the major benefits of running your own business is that you can, to an extent, design your life to fit around your work, family and other interests. For some time now I don’t feel like I have been enjoying this benefit – so now is the time to turn this around.
So that is the first two of my Groundhog Day Resolutions. I have made a few more as well which I haven’t yet finished writing up – but I’ll be working towards them and will hopefully post about them in more detail in the coming days.
UPDATE: I’ve updated the post above to take care of some careless/lazy grammar which came about from editing and posting far too late last night. There are no significant changes to the actual content of the post.
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