A brand new day

It's a new day and a new year, and good things are coming.

It is important to take a positive attitude, and the new year is a good opportunity to embrace this approach. Here are some things people tend to do surrounding the new year or other similar periodic events in their lives.

• New Years resolutions: Setting goals is something that typically takes a different sort of strategic thinking than the day-to-day tactical decisions like what to get for lunch. Taking that break over the last week of the year or so let's you step back and resolve to make changes in your life.

  Of course most of these things get abandoned in a few weeks as we return to old habits, but we can try...

• Close out the books: Companies are usually on financial years corresponding to the calendar year, which also impacts taxes and related spending decisions. In a good year, you might spend money at the end because your taxes are high and these are deductions. In a bad year, you might try to delay spending till next year which you hope will be better.
• Set your plans for the new year: I like to do planning in the last week of the year - and at other times throughout the year. This is part of my regular planning schedule when I take time off of the day-to-day to adapt to what has happened and look again. While th notion of continuous updating of everything is seemingly good, in fact, it takes time for some things to work (or not), so my annual approaches I do around the new year.
• Figure out stuff: Day-to-day I rarely have enough time to really think through things and figure out complicated stuff. I take the time before the new year to do this because most other folks I otherwise work with are not working and thus I am less interrupted by them.
• Review your age and path in life: The days are short and the nights are long and the older you get the more apparent it is that your time is running out. On the other hand, when you are young and full of vim and vigor, you may be looking forward to even more freedom and fun as you move forward.

Too late

However, since this article is coming out on Jan 1, while I have spent the time between writing it and sending it to you doing these things, it's too late for you...

So I plan to enjoy the coming year and all the new things I have going for it. Here are some of them:

• Travel and meetings: This year, because of our acquisition of ELN I will be traveling to at least 10 different cities in 2024 and meeting perhaps 500 executives I have never met before. Add to that quarterly events and a few other conferences and I will be a road warrior (and worrier).
• More folks and more things: We have expanded our approach to getting to know people and grow our ecosystem, and at this point I am meeting about 50 new people per month in our free online forums. We are trying to provide more positive experiences for more people and help them to get to know each other as well as getting to know us.
• Drilling down in new technology: We have always looked into technology deeply, but the distraction of sales and marketing has kept us from doing a much as we wish we did. So we are engaging with more folks in more technology areas in more in-depth discussions than in the past.
• Diet and exercise: I have been doing too little exercise and too much eating for the last few years, but have been on the journey back to the thin athletic person I never was for the last year or so. This year my goal is to spend at least 2 hours a day exercising and less than one hour a day eating. Talk about metrics!
• Reading offline: I have found that I am reading almost everything online, and because the interfaces are not really as good as I would prefer, that is causing me to not spend the time thinking as I read things like books. So I am trying to read an offline book a month this year, about a wide range of topics I normally do not look into.

What will you do?

All work and no play makes you a dull [person]. How will you mix it up this year? We hope you will tell us a bit of this when you join us for one of our monthly free advisory sessions.

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It's just a quick introduction to other folks like us. People you meet who you might end up working with for the rest of your life. And ideas that may lead you to the next fun thing.

In summary

Have an excellent new year.