I love New Year’s. It’s the ultimate new beginning, a time for a fresh start, a time to set new goals and get started right away. To me, it makes sense to start something big on a big day. Your birthday is also a good day to make new goals or launch new projects.
Clearly, a lot of people feel the same way. That’s why so many people set New Year’s resolutions and why gyms are packet on January 2nd. Unfortunately, it only takes a few days for the crowds to thin out as people sink back in their old routines and stop showing up for the next year.
Another great time to start a new routine is Lent. Christians around the world, especially Catholics, pick something to give up for the 40 days of Lent because Jesus spent 40 days in the desert without food. Frequently they will give up sodas or sweets or some other sort of tasty food that’s not so good for you.
Lenten goals tend to work better at creating long-term behavioral change than New Year’s resolutions for three reasons:
- There’s an end date. People feel they can do anything for a few weeks.
- It takes 40 days to build a habit. Lent lasts for 40 days. By the end of that time period, a lot of people have the momentum and just stick with it. That’s how I gave up sodas several years ago.
- With a New Year’s resolution, you’re promising yourself. With a Lenten goal, you’re promising God. People tend to try harder for Lent.
Here’s the thing, though. You don’t need to wait for a big day to start making a change. You can do it anytime. My suggestion is to start as soon as you decide, because a scheduled future goal isn’t nearly as strong as decisive action. If whatever you’ve decided is worthwhile, you should get started right away. Why would you wait?
When I got the idea to write this book, I started jotting down ideas immediately. By the end of day one, I had written more than 2,000 words. That’s five percent of my 40,000 word target.
I’ve spent the last two decades in the health insurance industry and have learned a lot along the way, but I’ll never forget a lesson I learned early on. In my first insurance job, working for a company that called on seniors to talk with them about their Medicare coverage, we obtained a list of patients for a large doctor’s office. The doctors participated in our provider network, and our manager wanted us to call the people on the list to try to schedule an appointment. We were working in the evening, and most of the agents stopped making calls between 6 and 7 pm, assuming that the prospective clients were eating dinner and watching Wheel of Fortune during that time.
There was a guy named Al who had just started working for us. In fact, he had just gotten his insurance license after working for the airlines for most of his life. He was in his late 60s. Al didn’t stop calling at 6pm; instead, he just kept working his list. When he scheduled his fourth appointment in about 30 minutes, we all realized that seniors do, in fact, answer the phone in the evening and started making calls again. Because he didn’t wait to get started, Al enjoyed immediate success.
On your mark, get set, go.
While most people end up breaking their New Year’s resolutions pretty quickly, the fact is that there is some wisdom behind those resolutions. If people were able to keep them, the changes could have a major positive impact on their lives. Just one big change a year, if it were to stick, would be huge.
Over the past few years, I’ve had some version of the same few resolutions, and I’ve slowly made progress, though I’ve struggled just like everyone else. Still, these are great suggestions that, if implemented correctly, could help you get organized and free up enormous amounts of time. They all have to do with reducing the amount of physical stuff you have and the number of items on your to do list. And each idea can be reduced to a single word:
- Simplify: Routines/habits/simplify
- Eliminate
- Digitize – Back everything up to an actual external hard drive if you don’t trust cloud storage and then go put it in the safe deposit box along with your will and other stuff.
- Upgrade
- Automate