Hannah chats about cueing up 2025 to be the best year yet.
It’s not unusual to start the New Year with grand plans about what you’d like to achieve or determined to go on that health kick (now that you’ve eaten all the greens and purples out of the Quality Street tin!). It’s found that three-quarters of us will make New Year’s resolutions; many related to improving our health or finances. The problem is, we all know these resolutions are notoriously hard to stick to.
For starters, I hate the word ‘resolution’ – it sounds like ‘revolution’ as though I need to change who I am and it feels punitive, like a diet. For me (and I’m sure I’m no exception) a lifestyle choice makes me feel more in control and if I form a habit that I can see the rewards from, I’m much more likely to keep it up. Otherwise, like a diet, I might make it to the end of the elastic, but I’ll likely bounce back when I do!
I’m one of those people who suffers from optimism bias when it comes to gauging how much I can cram into any given time period; queen of the ever-expanding to-do list. ‘Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It’ by Oliver Burkeman has been a revelation in reinforcing the fact that the finite nature of our time on earth means we can’t achieve everything and choices need to be made. Most of us can get on board with that philosophy, but how do we translate it into practice?
Well, I spent some time between Christmas and the New Year paring things back and thinking about my values; what’s most important to me and how this translates in different areas of my life. This has created a yardstick against which I can measure any potential project that pops into my head. We all start the year with different personal and professional aspirations and looking at what’s inside and outside our sphere of influence is helpful in deciding what we’ll commit to. The next step for me is to carve out the time to make sure I’m regularly putting the hours in to advance my top priorities – one push isn’t usually enough to get us where we want to go and success is the accumulation of habit. See ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear for a deeper dive on this.
For me, as well as making sure I’m scheduling time to focus on my professional objectives, I know it’s also important to protect time to spend with family. Things can too easily be compromised or conceded as the distractions of daily life take over and that brings me back round to starting with your values. Will Durant paraphrased Aristotle in saying, “We are what we repeatedly do” and it helps to have your core values in mind in organising how you’re going to spend each day this year, because as Emily Dickinson taught us, “Forever – is composed of nows.”
How do you organise your time?
I’d love to hear how you get on and hope that 2025 brings you everything you could wish for!