A lot of us are making resolutions this weekend - lose weight, exercise more, get organized, write more blog posts (ok, maybe that's just me!), etc. And a lot of experts (like our friends over at the Harvard Business Review) are making suggestions about what kinds of resolutions we should make.
It occurs to me that, behind every New Year's Resolution, is a desire to do what matters. I'll toast to that. But it also occurs to me that, for most of us, doing what matters also means that we need to figure out how to stop doing things that don't.
Here are 5 purposeful questions you can ask yourself to figure out what doesn't matter anymore:
- Are we (still) having fun doing it?
- Is it easy to get people to lead and participate in it?
- Are people's lives being changed by it?
- Are we being changed in positive ways by doing it?
- Would anybody miss it if we stopped doing it?
If you answer no to #1 plus ANY of the other questions, you should stop whatever it is you're doing right now.
If you answer no to any one of these questions, including #1, consider taking a time out from doing it. Take a break. Give it a rest. And see what happens. After a few weeks or months, re-evaluate it and decide whether or not it's worth doing again. Odds are, it won't be.
What New Year's Resolutions are you making this weekend?
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