New Year Resolutions – 5 for 2017

It is that time of year where we all feel a bit guilty from the festive excesses and start coming up with lots of personal goals and aims that tend to be forgotten by February. I think we make them because we enjoy having something to aim for, yet there is no real incentive to measure our performance.

My former employer and many of the same ilk tend to have yearly goal setting and tie-in bonuses and performance based on those goals. I’m quite sceptical over goals needing to be yearly – different projects require different settings, why does it need to be tied to a year? Convenience of a yearly measure is the most obvious reason and I linked an article on how IBM is changing their way of performance management here.

But the merits of that is probably for another article. Despite my own scepticism, I think setting out some aims for 2017 is a good thing for myself. The question is, do I make them specific and measurable or do I go for more philosophical ambitions. I’ve strayed towards the latter as for a very early business the measurable metrics (ie profit, revenue) is still contingent on many, many variables. Without further ado, here are my five resolutions for 2017:

Maintain writing the blog – I’ll review my progress in more detail later this month, but I will be happy with continuing to write twice a week. It has gotten easier to write and I think the way I communicate my ideas is more eloquent; but the subject matter is still a tough thing – despite having a long list of ideas. As my business progresses I hope topics become more obvious.
Increase readership participation – As the blog matures I want to have more of my readers participating in discussions and comments. How do I proactively go about doing this? I’m not quite sure yet.
Be ambitious – It is a fine line between being ambitious and potentially taking on too much too quickly. Yet being too shy is not likely to get you anywhere either. So whatever happens with puls8.io in 2017, I’m going to go out in a blaze of glory rather than a whimper!
Don’t panic – Things may take a bit longer than expected to get going. I’ve outlined previously that it may take until April/May to get proper traction. What if it takes longer? A little bit of patience, otherwise…..
…change it up – I hate using the word ‘pivot’, it’s such a startup buzzword. I prefer to think of it as adapting to your business environment. This point though relates to being ruthless on my major assumptions. I will periodically review them and keep my readers updated. If things don’t look too rosy on this front then I need to use the data and switch things up. Doing that is a fact of business, but sometimes fear can set in.

So this is my resolution list for 2017. On a side note, I’d be interested in seeing how many readers actually part ways with their previous employer in 2017. Or how new entrepreneurs have started up and get along. As ever if you have topics you want me to discuss please let me know in the comments.Finally, please share with me what your resolutions for 2017 – I want to hear what targets you have for the year!