Thinking about a new year…

As we come to this time of year, most people are thinking about goals, resolutions, and plans for the coming year. This can be a challenging exercise, but can also be a helpful one to set you off on a good foot into the new year. Here’s a quick and simple way to think about the year ahead:

Take a sheet of paper. Fold it in half and then fold it in half again. Then unfold the paper to its full size.

At the top of each quadrant, write the following words: Career, Financial, Relationships, and Self.

Now within each quadrant, jot down notes about where you’d like to be 12 months from now. Career is an area many people plan goals for, but this is only a portion of your life. Take the time to think about all four of these categories. Relationships should include your spouse, children, other family, and friends. Self should include spiritual, health, personal development, and recreation.

Once you’ve done this, your best chance of achieving these will be if you establish plans for each. If one of your “Self” goals is to be 20 pounds lighter, for example, you’ll need to commit to a plan to achieve that goal.

Next week, I’ve got some thoughts on what section of your life you should focus on to increase your odds of success.

If you find this exercise useful, I’d love to get feedback. Just comment below. (You can repeat the exercise with any four categories if you want, but seeing it all on one piece of paper brings a unique perspective on your world, and one that I have found helpful.)

Unlimited Availability

I read a great blog post recently by a guy named Casey Graham. Casey is a church consultant whose insights I’ve found to be helpful on the church management front many times. This blog post went a new direction in helping me, though. And I thought it was the kind of content that might be helpful to others as well.

Casey discusses the process of going from personally investing time in every client relationship and then growing his business beyond his capacity to sustain that. He realized what I think many of us need to realize as well.

If you are available for everyone, you will become available for no one.

Some have more capacity for emotional connections than others but none of us have an unlimited one. If we become more available to all of our clients or people we serve, we will become less available to our family and friends. And some relationships are so important that they need to take priority. 


Read more here