On Making Resolutions

I’ve never been much of a “new year resolutions” kind of guy.

As much as I’ve always believed in goal-setting, which is what new year resolutions really are, it has never occurred to me that they actually work.

I was looking back on the new year resolutions I had written about last year — both explicitly and implicitly stated, through my old written journals — and I realised that I had actually accomplished many of them without the need for any conscious thinking about them throughout the rest of the year.

Subconscious Push

It was as if I had set the tone for the rest of the year simply by stating what I had wanted early on, creating a kind of “subconscious” push toward it.

The Business Plan

This concept reminds me of the creation of a business plan.

It has been said in various business publications that a business plan is important to the success of a business not because it is followed strictly throughout the year.

It has been even said that many successful businesses do a business plan in the beginning of a new year only to forget about it for the rest of the year!

There are simply too many unknown variables (both external and internal) that are impossible to take into account during the formulation of the business plan.

So why, and how, do business plans work?

Thinking of the Future

The formulation of a business plan is important because of the thinking through the year ahead.

The thinking alone allows the business to orientate itself toward its goals. It sets the general direction in which the business will take.

It is not at all necessary to follow everything found inside a business plan.

Resolutions

So, much like the business plan, setting resolutions and making broad plans toward the resolution of these resolutions, is important toward the relative “success” of your year.