Plan your resolution for New Year 2013

Welcome my friend, I wish you a very happy new year. Adding value to a manager’s life is my sole motto. Years come and go, we make some commitments to our self and regret later for not accomplishing them. Under the pressure of several urgent items every day, we keep postponing actions that matter to us most. How can we take out time for things that drive our life? How can we live a life we want? How can we make a commitment to our self this New Year and hold it. The key is there in the planning.

Hardly, we will have a project that runs for a year but does not have any plan. Either high level or detailed, some kind of plan is available that guide us in a direction to achieve project objectives.

Have you ever prepared a plan for yourself, for the objectives you set in the beginning of the year or for a commitment you made to yourself? If there is no plan how you will move in a specific direction and achieve your objectives.

I will help you here planning for yourself, for your commitment and for your resolution for this New Year 2013.

I will suggest you some activities and contents to move towards your objectives. I don’t know about your resolution/objective, so please make change based on your resolution. If you are not sure, please start moving with suggested plan and make changes later when you get more clarity.

Let’s get into actual plan

1. First commitment – Will read at least one book in 2 months.

This plan is for the people who rarely or do not read books. You can start from these books. This is the first step as solutions to all your problems are there in books.

1. First Thing First
2. Power of positive thinking
3. 7 Habits of highly effective people
4. Bhagwat Gita
5. How I raised myself from failure to Success in Selling
6. 4 Hours work week

Half an hour investment every day. If it takes too much to read a book, the good news is that most of the books are available in audio format nowadays. Start listening to these books while traveling to office and back.

Book lovers can make their own plan. I am not competent enough to suggest.

2. Second commitment – Will add at least one skill every month

Some suggested skills are…

1. My Time Management Skills
2. Learn self-defense (Specially for Women)
3. Appreciating people Top, Down, Left & Right
4. Lean Management
5. Delivering defect free product the first time
6. Defining flawless scope (without killing your client)
7. Preparing effective schedule
8. Managing Gross Margin (Without killing your team)
9. The art of delegation
10. Art of coaching your reports
11. The Real Risk Management
12. The art of informing to your stakeholders

Half an hour invetment every day. Please reorder, add, modify or delete in above list after defining your priorities for which master the first skill first i.e. time management.

3. Third commitment – Will make me more effective

Some suggested actions are…

1. Doing yoga/exercise for 1 hour 3 times a week
2. Jogging/Playing for 1 hour 3 times a week
3. Listening to one of my reports or younger one for 10 minutes without interrupting her/him (once a week)
4. Make a new friend every month whose views are quite different from me

One hour invetment every day. Is this making any sense to you? If yes, let’s move ahead. After reading list of actions above, are you getting some more ideas? Good, take pen and paper and note down. Make as many changes as you want in above list but first write down your objective – your resolution for 2013 and then select actions and contents based on your resolution.

Does it appear bit hard? As I said, my sole motto is to add value in a manager’s life, I will make it convenient for you to plan and track.

I have prepared a Microsoft Project Plan for you to download. Right click on the link provided below, select Save as.

Download Microsoft Project (2010) Plan for Resolution for 2013

Download Microsoft Project (2007) Plan for Resolution for 2013

You don’t have Microsoft Project? I know many of you may not have it, so you can download same plan in excel format. Right click on the link provided below and select Save as.

Download your plan for Resolution for 2013 in excel format

The success is not in preparing your plan but it is the start of the journey. The success is in discipline execution of the plan. There is no success without discipline so discipline is an important word here.

Does this look a tall order? You can reduce it to your comfort level.

Some people will reduce it to luxurious level, some will reduce it further and further until it eliminates but let me tell you one thing…

You run an organization called [Your Name], You are CEO and MD of this organization. There is only one employee in this organization and that is you.  Success of this organization solely depends upon you. If you don’t act, this organization will starve and become weak and then it will go where others will push it not where you want to take it. Will you allow this to happen?