Wednesday, January 01, 2020

This year is another chance to get it right, Happy New year!

Wish you a happy new year 2020. 


New year is always exciting. This is because we think we have something new. Universe is not moving and hence time stand still. If you were to stand outside the universe, outside both space and time, and look at your life, you would see your birth, your death and every moment in between laid out as distinct points. From this angle, time does not flow, but is static and fixed. We are aging and moving ahead. However, as the earth is rotating around the sun, we think that time is moving. 

With this moving world, we have some wishes, dreams; we make plans; we have some goals to achieve. However, then we say that we don’t have the time to do it all. We make resolutions every year, but they remain on paper only. We don’t do anything what we have decided because we don’t have that push from our inner self. We don’t commit it to ourselves. In organizations, when you take some goals, objectives and targets, mostly you achieve the same, because your existence in the organization and your job is dependent on that targets. If you don’t achieve your targets, your job will be in danger and hence your commitment comes. Sometimes it is because you want to grow in the organization and hence you have a commitment and hence push from your inner self.

This does not happen when there are not any consequences. If your doctor told you that you had life-threatening disease and if you didn’t walk daily at least 3-km, you would not survive. What will you do? Most of the people, will follow doctors’ advice because it has high stakes. 



We don’t have that big stakes in resolutions. We think that these resolutions are either harmless or do not have an immediate impact on the life.  

What are those resolutions? Waking early in the morning, going to the Gym, pursuing   any hobby, getting some additional skills etc. If you don’t follow these, you will not have any adverse or positive impact immediately. Hence the tendency is to postpone such resolutions. Further, we don’t convert these resolutions in goals and objectives like we do in professional life.

I was a part of one of the leadership development programmes in 2010. This programme was for selected management team members. Good part was that this programme was not like typical leadership workshop. It was spread over for almost 6 months with different learning objectives. We had to take few goals by every week, and we had to report the progress about the same to our internal and external coach. There were 3 types of goals.

Professional Goals: These are goals typically in professional life related to your job and work. 
Personal Goals: These are goals related to your personal life,
Back burner Goals: These are things which you want to do, but you have put it aside because of some other priorities. 

We are good about professional goals and objectives as our survival depends upon the same. Our performance, merit increase and bonuses are based on these goals and we almost die to achieve the same, but we put aside our personal goals.


People ask me how I get the time to write poems, articles, books, reading and attend conferences as a speaker, panellist etc. I think that goals if set properly, can be achieved with some effort. However, we don’t want to put efforts. During above leadership programme, I learned to focus equally on the above 3 types of goals. I never compromised my professional goals to focus on personal and back burner goals. But I started given equal importance to all types of goals. I have to stretch sometimes to achieve these but then when I get the results, I get the energy to do it more. 

Today also I write my all 3 types of goals. Apart of my bonus targets and performance objective, I ensure that I take professional goals by every week along with personal and back burner goals.    

I set goals, I see them regularly, I commit to the goals and I share these with timelines.  
So? make resolutions as you do every year, but this year, convert them in goals and objectives. Write your dreams on your heart and you will have it. 

I wish you and your family as happy new year 2020. This year is another chance to get it right. 




3 comments:

MAYU said...

Really helpful article. Wishing you and your family members Happy, Healthy and prosperous New year 2020.

Antonio Zaccagnino said...

Really a very deep and helpful article Vinod. Tks for this! Happy new year 2020

Sachin Aute said...

Very nicely written. It would help all for making career goals and work towards achievements of the same.

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