When you wake up on January 1st, what are the first messages you see as you scroll through your social media feeds and thoughts that immediately spring to mind? Most likely they are some combination of the below:
- Here’s how to lose weight!
- Discover what truly makes you happy!
- Simplify your life!
- Make more time for your significant other!
- Spend more quality time with your kids!
- Make time for YOU!
- Get more done in a day!
And not to be left out, you likely are making mental plans for your career and getting bombarded with ads that are selling you on the idea of making changes to improve your business.
- Expand your marketing strategy and increase your advertising budget!
- Achieve Inbox Zero!
- 3 Steps to Making Five Figures a Month (courtesy of a business coach you’ve never heard of before seeing that ad)!
- Implement a new CRM!
- How can I make better use of my employees’ time and capabilities?
- Is there a way to streamline my processes to improve efficiency?
- Unsubscribe from marketing and sales emails to clear brain space for the things that matter
- Our website (or blog) is stale. We need a refresh!
I don’t know about you, but while the beginning of a new year rightfully signifies the time to begin correcting and improving things in your life and business that aren’t as optimized as they could (theoretically) be, we also most likely have pretty lofty goals for what we can realistically change, achieve and stick to. We’re inspired and excited by the newness of it all, but it’s all so new that reality hasn’t caught up.
And that’s exactly why I think we’re all better off deciding on our new year resolutions a bit later in the year. February at least, but March is even better.
Why March is the Best Time to Set your New Year’s Resolution
By March, we’ve had enough time to see which of our endless list of new year improvements have actually stuck around. Maybe we’ve been pretty good about getting in another day of exercise each week, have surprised ourselves by already completing our taxes, and have consistently blogged once a week since the beginning of January. Not so good is our desk organization, updating of our employee training materials, and buying hummus and carrots instead of chocolate and Fritos.
Waiting a couple months into the new year to set our goals gives us a chance to see what we care about most and how much change we can adequately adapt to. It’s then that we can properly and clearly focus on what to do with the next 10 months of our year. Goals become easily identifiable and often already defined. Waiting until March means we are setting ourselves up for success by letting go of all the resolutions either we didn’t care deeply about or didn’t have the time or desire to work to achieve.
So what do you think? Do you feel that you actually have a better feel for the year, changes you can feasibly make and goals you want to achieve now that we are a couple months in?
