What’s your Mount Shasta goal for 2024?
Mount Shasta is in California, north of Sacramento, and travelling up Interstate 5 you become aware of it in the distance. It’s a dominating feature of the terrain.
Consultant Wally Bock says you should be picking something momentous to achieve in 2024 – and beyond – rather than settling for resolutions that are contained to just the year (or in some cases, perhaps only a few months). Like Mount Shasta, he suggests on his blog, “it should be off in the distance, but big, something you’re constantly aware of. It should be something so important that you don’t want to lose sight of it.”
Pick something that fits the BHAGs description that Jerry Porras and Jim Collins touted in their book Built to Last: A big, hairy, audacious goal. Then adopt a system to work toward it. “Every week I concentrate on identifying a clear step that will get me closer to my Mount Shasta Goal. I determine what actions I need to take to make that step happen, and then I track my behaviour. Some weeks I get there and some weeks I don’t. The next week I do it again,” he writes.
Making progress will feel good. But you could steer off course. So every quarter he asks himself:
- Is my BHAG still a big deal?
- Is it still the best goal to have out there in the future?
- Am I making progress in getting there?
- What should I do next to make progress toward it?
At this time of the year, when everyone else is contemplating resolutions, he simply is repeating that quarterly reality check, and if justified, continuing progress to his Mount Shasta destination.
Another approach to New Year’s resolutions is to make two lists: One of things you want to spend more of your life on in 2024 and the other things you want to spend less of your life on. Winnipeg blogger David Cain says instead of trying to change overnight on Jan. 1, you use the whole year to do less of certain things that you know are a net problem for you and more of other things that are a net benefit. “You’re not attempting to eliminate, or guarantee, any behaviours on your part. You’re only trying to move in the right direction, consistently, with a small handful of habits,” he writes.
List A, the positives, might include having coffee more with friends or colleagues who inspire you. List B, the negatives, might be headed by spending less time on social media. He acknowledges items on that second list are probably also rewarding in some way, but often come with regrets or downsides, and usually don’t have lasting benefits. “Whatever they are, you know they’re not worth sacrificing much of your life for – watching TV shows that are okay but not great, adding a sugary muffin to your coffee order, jumping on to the computer as soon as you get home, embellishing your anecdotes, leaving the dishes till bedtime, hate-scrolling comment sections, and so on,” he says.
Each in itself may not seem all that important. That’s why he uses the descriptor “spending your life on.” Even though we generally don’t regard our day-to-day behaviours as things we’re choosing to spend our lives on, they do add up – on List A or B.
But don’t overdo it. He recommends keeping each list to six to eight items, or otherwise you won’t attend to them all.
“This sort of resolution is gentler and more forgiving than the traditional kind, but it carries a stronger sense of identity with it. The kind of person you want to be is easy to remember when you look at your list,” he writes.
Quick hits
- “It’s impossible to be your best self without disappointing some people some of the time,” notes author Mark Manson.
- Here’s some questions career adviser Eva Chan suggests asking when being interviewed for a job: What do you think is the most challenging aspect of this job? What two or three qualities define a top performer at your company? Could you share a piece of career advice based on our conversation today?
- Marketing consultant Mark Schaefer says too many business leaders are trying to build their brand as an authority by articles on LinkedIn. It’s better to publish on your own website or a place like Substack where you own the email addresses, can grow relationships, and also be found on Google.
- “Amateurs think in absolutes. Professionals think in probabilities,” says Farnam Street blogger Shane Parrish.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.