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When I write this article it’s the middle of November 2022. Wars all around the globe, sky rocking inflation, upcoming recession, many different diseases – depression and anxiety on the top of the list. Let’s be honest – it isn’t the best landscape that we could’ve imagined for ourselves to live in. What does that have to do with the New Year’s resolutions? When the times are hard, we prefer to stay low, to wait until the situation improves. We wait. And we wait. And we wait a little bit more. And guess what? There is always SOMETHING. Politics, wars, pandemics, environment pollution, education crisis. You name it. There is always something that is going on that we can treat as an excuse to not taking uncomfortable action, to change something, to get a new job or to end a relationship that isn’t working anymore. So the real question is, what can we do to stick to the New Year’s resolutions that most of us make at the very beginning of the year? Let’s start to work on them now. Why most of the New Year’s resolutions don’t stick? We are so motivated, have a lot of energy, sometimes even a great plan. We wait until January 1 and… Only about 16% of us are sticking to the resolutions we make at the beginning of the year, most of us give up during the first 6 weeks. Why? “I don’t have time”, “I don’t have money”, “I need to focus on different things now”, “I am not motivated enough to do this”, “Nobody supports me in this”. That’s just some of the most frequent ones. And it doesn’t really matter if we are talking about getting rid of bad elements of our life or building new, good ones. Excuses are one thing. Why else those resolutions don’t stick?  Which of those is applicable to yourself? More than one? All of them? What can we do differently? Each bullet point can be resolved – some of those are easier to manage, some are more complex and difficult. But altogether, it’s possible to finish with the old, bad habits and beliefs about resolutions, and start with being better with them, starting today. 1. We use magical thinking of the New-Year-new-me situation that only lasts few days. This is the reason why I encourage you to start today, not to wait until January 1. Magical thinking can be connected to some traditions, rituals, habits taken from family, religion or society. New Year’s resolutions are part of our social life – media talk about it, we talk about it every year with our friends, the subject is always there when the year starts. Stop it and change the way of thinking and doing. Don’t wait for a perfect timing, it can never come. 2. The resolutions are too big. There is nothing wrong with thinking and dreaming big. My advice is: dream big, plan small. Divide your dreams and goals for smaller chunks that are more achievable. Don’t underestimate the small – sometimes we value only the big things, and it is a crime to our well-being and a sense of self-recognition. Remember, small is better than zero, and a sum of small things makes the whole big thing happen. 3. Those things we want to change are not connected to anything that is already in our life. It is always harder to create a new habit or skill when we start from scratch, then to develop the thing that is already there. When you plan new things you would like to have, always choose the existing habit, activity or a simple thing you do every day. Glue a new thing to the old one, it makes it stick. 4. We want to achieve a resolution in a really short period of time. I know that we all like quick results. We want to believe in losing 10kg in one month or in learning how to read a book per day in two weeks. Try to divide the bigger dreams to the smaller chunks that you can achieve faster. It’ll give you constant boost of motivation and will keep you on track to not quit before you see any results. 5. We assume 0/1 situation (either I achieve it or not – there is nothing in between, no space for flexibility, change or not being perfect all the time). We punish ourselves when we eat a piece of candy when we wanted to quit. Let’s say that you’ve decided to quit eating it starting Monday, and on Thursday you ate a small piece of chocolate. What most people do? “Screw it, I’ve already slipped, so I’ll eat the whole thing and start my diet on Monday”. And it goes on and on, as a never-ending story. What about that: “all right, I’ve slipped – it can happen to anyone”, and keep continue not eating candy after the event. Nobody is perfect and there is no point in punishing ourselves for it every single day. 6. We don’t differentiate goals from habits. A goal is a thing we want to achieve, and a habit is a repetitive, sometimes even unconscious sequence of behavior that can lead us to reach the goal. It’s important that we differentiate those two elements, just to make sure that we build habits that are going to be useful while achieving the goals we want.   7. The resolution is not about us, it’s about other people or things that we have zero influence on. We often quit on things because we don’t see result of our actions. And we don’t see the results, because we want to change something (or someone) that is way out of our influence zone. Remember that we can only change things that are in our scope of control – how we react on certain things, how we communicate, set boundaries or use our time. Focus on that, don’t waste time on something that won’t

Most of us want to spend those 24h we all have in the best possible way. We try to be good at time management, more efficient, cut the “time wasters” or use Pomodoro technique. And with all that we are still surprised that we are not as good with time as we want, we don’t achieve as much as we want, personally or professionally. It’s happening mostly because we have many convictions and false believes in our heads about the right approach to the time itself. We’ve read or heard something without deeper reflection on the idea, we put it in the brain and sticked to it. Now is the time to challenge 5 of the most crucial statements that we have in our heads and that are stopping us from being successful. 1. Being always busy is a sign of your high value Being busy makes us feel important, needed. We often have this impression that if our calendars are fully packed, we are more valuable. And when we see free slots, we feel guilty, sometimes scared of “not doing anything”. It is a symptom of modern times that assesses the usefulness and importance of an employee by level of their calendar’s “busyness”.   And that’s crazy, since we know how many of those meetings are pointless and could’ve been an e-mail or a Teams message. And on the flip side, we know how much we can do when we are undistracted, focused, when we have time and space for taking a step back and actually THINK about what we want to achieve and how. So I would like to encourage you to reflect on what you are thinking about being busy all the time – advantage or disadvantage? Be honest with yourself, nobody is going to judge you. Then think to which meeting you can say “no” to, to gain some of your time back to build a real value? 2. People always understand “I don’t have time” answer Speaking of saying “no” to things. This subject was discussed in a more detailed way in this article, but this excuse is being treated as a universal sentence on every situation when we don’t want or don’t know how to deal with something. When a manager has a conflict in a team, she/he often says: “I don’t have time for that right now, we have more urgent business cases to cover”. When a person doesn’t feel very good, has headaches or feels tired all the time, he/she just takes a pill or have another cup of coffee. “I don’t have time for that right now, I need to take care of work/home/kids/parents”. You name it. “I don’t have time” is a false friend. As mentioned many times on this blog, we are not victims or slaves of the time, we are its owners. And as owners, it’s our decision what to do with the time we have – every single minute that we spend on this planet is in our scope of control. It’s our choice what we do with it and with whom. Put some effort in and find the time you’ve lost when you started using “I don’t have time” excuse. What can you do differently to stop saying that? 3. Scheduling the hardest tasks first is always a good time strategy How you schedule your day should be connected with your internal level of energy, named the circadian rhythm. Each person on the planet at 9:00AM has different body temperature, heart rate, metabolism or blood pressure. The time of the day will affect behavior and intellectual performance differently regarding each of us. Till Roenneberg created a set of chronotypes that describe our energy cycle throughout the day, taking into consideration how we differ and what can we do about it to live a better live. We do know that it’s not possible to wake up whenever we fell like it, work when we feel the most effective and go to bed when we feel asleep (including naps during the day). We have 9-5 jobs, we need to get up at a certain time to work, take care of other things in the morning, afterwork etc. So for those of us who are Wolfes (going to bed around 12AM, waking up around 7:30-9AM) the deep or creative work will be the most efficient around 12-2PM. On the other hand, for those of us who are Lions (going to bed around 10PM, waking up around 6-7AM) the highest efficiency will be around 8AM-12PM. You can read more about where you land on the scale in this article. Regarding that, the idea of working on the biggest task first thing in the morning is not applicable or healthy for everyone. For some of us it’ll work, for some of us it’ll be the worse thing you can do. Check which type you are and decide what can you do differently to live more in harmony with your natural cycle. Maybe it’s just one little thing, like scheduling time for deep work in the different time during the day? 4. Multitasking is a good way of getting done more faster Several years back, multitasking was a skill listed in the job advertisements as a requirement of a good candidate. Doing more than one thing at the same time appeared as a “competence of the future” and was a real thing that employers was looking for regarding increasing number of tasks in the workplace. Nowadays we should be smarter about it, since we have more research that tells us that there is no such thing as multitasking. It’s impossible to do two things at the same time, we can only switch between the tasks, sometimes really quickly. But each time we get distracted, we lose focus, and we need more and more time to get back to where we were a minute ago. So in a consequence of that, we think we save some time and do things faster, but

In the previous article, I’ve started the story about “I don’t have time” excuse. I got inspired by a structure that we can make around this excuse, and how many areas of our live it might influence, making us thoughtless and unhappy at the end of the day. In this article, we are going to get on the record one of the most difficult and important things there are regarding getting our time back – saying “no” to things. It’s crucial for us, as people, employees, partners, parents or friends to set healthy boundaries, with a good intention to ourselves and the world that is around us. Might seems easy, but believe me that a lot of people are struggling with this every single day. Do you want to know how to do it and don’t feel guilty? How saying “no” to things at work can help? It is a natural instinct that tells us to stay in the group at work, it has its roots in history and biology and it comes from our need to survive and not be eaten by a tiger. So we stick together, and when somebody is asking us for supporting them in their tasks, or give us a task to cover that is totally crushing our plan for the day (especially if this person is our manager or somebody even higher in the hierarchy), we stop doing what we were doing, and jump right into the new assignment. Sounds familiar? We just want other people to like us, we want to be seen as reliable, helpful individuals, and it’s natural. But with what cost? The cost is being behind with our own tasks or projects, working extra hours to fill everything out, feeling frustrated that another day brought the same scenario – we planned everything, and it ended like always. Ruined. I’m not surprised when people who I teach about making a structure around their day to focus their energy on the right things, are saying to me: “Alex, it’s not working for me. I can plan my day, but then my manager/board member/colleague from my team comes to me and give me something that is urgent and what needs to be done ASAP”. And they agree to do it. Because they don’t want to be seen as lazy, not supportive, selfish, inflexible. Setting boundaries at work is a real skill and its goal is to protect our time from other people who wants to get their job done, using our skills, readiness to help and ability to do things efficiently and effectively. If somebody comes to you or sends you something that requires an investment of your time and focus (even if it’s just 5 minutes), take a step back before you dive into doing it. Ask yourself: “Is it my job to do it? Is it that important for the organization that I should resign from what I do and do this instead? Is it that urgent that I should do it now?”. You can use your own examples, but remember to always stay in OK-OK position, with a good intention. What people are most afraid of is if they start setting the boundaries and protect themselves, other people will stop liking them, or coming to them when they need help. It’s not true. Keeping the good intention, clear communication about the division of responsibilities and clear timeline is a main key to avoid conflicts, misunderstanding and to build equality in treating each other’s time and skills. How saying “no” to things at home can help? It’s different from country to country, from culture to culture how we are functioning at our homes. In some cultures, with more patriarchal touch, traditional, conservative way of living is when women are staying at home, raising children and taking care of everything what’s connected to the “house”, without ever saying “no” to anything. They also take care of older members of the family, while men are supposed to earn money and bring it to them. Nowadays it’s changing, but – taking as an example Poland, my country of birth and living at the moment, the beliefs and convictions about the “classical” roles of men and women in the society are really deeply rooted. And based on that, we often have beliefs and convictions in our heads about what we SHOULD do or who SHOULD we be in a certain context. It is connected to the conservative and post conservative thinking mindset, but even if we are in post conservative stage, we often have strong second thoughts about how we should set boundaries at our homes. And statistically, more of those tasks are on the women’s shoulders, so we have more troubles with saying “no” to things, not agreeing to do something what should be “natural” to us. But it’s not about what we SHOULD do. It’s about what we want to do, and what we want to share with others, as we live together, and maybe what to withdraw completely to not thinking about it and focus on that really matter to us. Make a list of things that you do at home at the moment. It can be connected to the cleaning, cooking, shopping for groceries, taking care of pets or kids. You name it, it’s your list. Ask people in your house to do the same things, include the children if you want. If you live alone, do it as well. Then, underline those things that are crucial to you, that are the closest to your heart and you would never let them go. See what is left on the list. Decide what to do with those items – how to share responsibilities with other people in your house or maybe take someone from the outside to help, if you can afford it? What I’m sure you cannot afford is to do everything on your own and not ask for support. I know asking for help for some of us is

I can risk a statement that most of us would like to spend time better. Be more focused, less distracted by the endless notifications on our phones or computers, countless e-mails and messages, other peoples’ needs and asks. To be more efficient and more effective – professionally and privately. What OKRs have to do with that? OKRs are one of the best time/performance management tools that I know, use and teach. Today I would like to share that knowledge with you. It’s all about using our time wisely, on things that really matter and to measure the outcome, so we know that this energy is well-spend. Let’s begin and know more about this creature. What are OKRs? OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. Objectives are answering the question: “What I would like to do/achieve?”. Key Results are answering the question: “How I am going to measure my success?” or “When will I know that I’ve achieved what I wanted?”. Basically, it’s a really simple tool that supports us in focusing on the right things and giving us evidence that we constantly achieving what we aim for. OKRs have several elements that are important to know for better understanding the whole idea before we move into the creation part. Here are 3 of them, the most crucial from my perspective: Bored Zone is when you are bored to death with your work. You do the same tasks all the time, answering the same questions every single day, solving the same problems. Don’t get me wrong – for some people it’s fine and they like to have structure and safety. But for some, it’s a straight way to feel burned out, bored all the time and loose their efficiency. Comfort Zone is the most well-known one I think, thanks to this sentence: “you need to go outside of your comfort zone to achieve something”. True, but it’s not the whole story about this one. In the Comfort Zone we are Subject Matter Experts, we feel competent and comfortable in our scope of responsibilities, expertise or skills. We can work efficiently, without wasting time on things that are not in our area of expertise. Staying all the time in this one is not developmental, since we only use the knowledge that we already have and not learning anything new. Stretch Zone is where the growth magic happens. When we stretch, we need to take an uncomfortable action from time to time, to learn new things, to grow, to meet new people. We are using our existing skills and we build new ones on them, to achieve different, extraordinary things. It requires courage, investing time to learn and keep attention on something new, but it’s worth the effort, since it is the place where we can actually grow and change our lives. Burnout Zone is when we are in the Stretch or Bored Zone for too long. It can happen when we have a really monotonous work or when we have too much on our plate. We feel constantly overstressed, frustrated, tired – it can be different for all of us. We are not efficient, we can’t focus and sometimes we even can go into depression or other mental health issues, especially being here longer. And it can have a huge impact on our health. From my experience, I would advice you to maneuver between Comfort and Stretch Zone – it’s the best configuration, taking into consideration the risk of going to far to the Burnout Zone and to not fall into the Bored Zone. Try to define what is comfort and what is stretch for you and move between those two to check how it work. How can we use OKRs professionally? OKRs are great if we use them well. The key is to understand that they cannot be business as usual tasks – since we need to stretch ourselves to achieve them. What’s the most important that Key Results are most of the time not actions that you are going to take. They are measurements that you use to see if you’re achieving your goals or not. Let me give you some examples to visualize the whole thing. Objective 1: Grow my skillset from Specialist to Expert by the end of Q1 2023. Key Results 1: Objective 2: Improve managerial skills by the end of Q4 2022. Key Results 2: The Objectives can be big, should be ambitious. They can stay the same from quarter to quarter, we can only change the Key Results, to be applicable to the specific, individual situation. As included in the examples, measurements are here to support us with making sure that we are staying on the right track. Sometimes there are 0/1 situations (either I do something, or not), but I encourage you to find concrete numbers, indicators that will be influenced by your specific actions. Once you have your goals and the specific results that you want to achieve, you can make a plan of activities that will allow you to gain what you want or need. How can we use OKRs personally? Professional area is more intuitive for us to use, since OKRs were made to support the business in tech world and might seem easier to use at work. But there are super useful not only in organizational area, but also in every other aspect of our life. How can we use them? Let me give you some examples. Objective 3: Become the healthiest possible version on myself by the end of Q4 2023. Key Results 3: Objective 4: Become an early riser by the end of Q1 2023. Key Results 4: As you can see – some of those Key Results are actions, some of them are clear measurements and we need to figure out what kind of activities we should take to reach them. Create a mixed list of Key Results will be the best option and I really encourage you to check if they are diverse, before moving to

A couple weeks ago, my dear friend told me that she sees that there is one common thing in my Instagram posts and articles that I create: a subject of wasting time. And it dawned on me that it is so true. One of the most things that I hate the most on this planet is wasted time AND the excuse that a lot of people use that they don’t have time. To do something with their lives, their careers, their development. To read. Or to give their parents a 5-minute call. We are so busy that we forget what’s really important. We focus on wrong things, instead of spend energy on those that actually matter. The question is, what you can say “no” to, to get your time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse at work Do you ever feel that you spend a really busy day (or week), you participated in several different meetings, answered countless e-mails and other messages, covered some tasks from your to-do list, but at the end of the day (or week) you can’t tell that you have actually done something? That you’ve created any value? It’s happening when people are “busy” and not “productive”. We can be busy and not create anything important. And it really doesn’t matter if we work in a creative space or not. Each job should have a space where we can create a value, something that really matters. If it’s not your current job, maybe it’s time for you to think about reskilling/upskilling yourself and find another place where you’ll have this opportunity. “I don’t have time” excuse at work is when we are busy, often spending time on little things, procrastinating bigger ones, those that can actually brings value to other people in the organization, clients, the company itself, the environment. We think that we covered so much, because we were busy the whole day, but did we really? The solution for that is to have a structure around your workday. Make a list of the tasks that you want to cover within the day (or a week). Divide them into two categories: big ones and small ones. Choose 1-2 big ones and 3-4 small ones from the list. Make baby steps – if you choose too many, you are going to procrastinate the whole thing, and nothing will get done. Always start with big ones. It’ll give you more motivation to keep going when you’ll see actual results of your work. Then move to the next one. Don’t check your e-mail inbox every minute. Turn off notifications, check it only 2-3 times a day. Create a space in your calendar for “deep work”, let’s say the first 2 hours of your workday. It will allow you to get things done, before meetings, training sessions, calls, 1:1s, e-mails etc. You can find more about this approach in a book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport (I wrote about slots for deep work HERE as well). Which tasks, e-mails, asks from other people you can say “no” to, to get some of your work time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse in professional development Working in learning & development area, or in HR in overall for years now, showed me that when people get stuck with their careers, they use the I-don’t-have-time excuse a lot. They have no opportunities to grow in the organization. There is nothing new for them to learn. They don’t know what to do with themselves. And when I ask the question: “What you actually want to do with your career?” the most common answer is: “Oh, I don’t know. Develop me.”. It’s amazing how people’s brain works, and how often we just let some of our areas of life go, because we just don’t want to take any uncomfortable action, we just making excuse after excuse. We live in a bored zone or comfort zone for years, keep saying that we don’t have time to read, to take a course, to start a business, to listen to a podcast. That’s crazy, taking into consideration how many hours per week we spend on Netflix or other platform watching movies and series. Don’t get me wrong, I watch things too and I love it. But I am mindful about my time, and I use it wisely, taking care of a balance between each area in my life. Create a structure around your professional development. What kind of healthy habits for your brain you would like to build? Make a list. Choose an app that’s going to support you in building those habits (I use Habitica at the moment and I love it). Make some of them daily, some of them weekly habits. Make it a challenge, but not too much – remember that when we want to build habits, we need to take baby steps to convince our brain that it’s worth the effort. Check in settings how much time do you spend daily using your phone. And how much of it you can cut and spend it for reading for instance? Which bad habits, ways of spending (or wasting) your day you can say “no” to, to get some of your after (or before) work time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse in health When we say “I don’t have time” excuse to the things that are important to keep us in a good health and shape as long as it’s possible, we wake up one day and it’s too late. We have cardiovascular issues, high blood pressure or high cholesterol level, diabetes, obesity – you name it. We can’t climb couple of steps without a pause or two somewhere in between. And we are only in our 30s or 40s. Sitting all day every day is not helpful. It wasn’t even an issue for our parents, and for us it is a huge one. And it influences not only our physical health, but also