Briefcase Study: Do you make New Year’s Resolutions?

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? Do you also keep New Year’s Resolutions?

I’m not a big resolutions guy, but I’m happy to hear from others who’ve had a resolution actually stick.

A friend of mine started a resolution to floss his teeth daily starting on January 1st, 2012, and hasn’t missed a day since. When you read this, assuming he hasn’t stumbled, that’s well over 4,750 days of uninterrupted flossing. He’s proud enough of that accomplishment that I know about it, and now you do too, haha.

Do you have a resolution that worked out long-term? If so, I’d love to hear about it. For the rest of us, I think there’s great power in this brand of optimism, even if it doesn’t become a lifelong habit. After all, if you don’t at least try to make a positive change every now and then, then who have you become?

Rather than try and guilt you into making a resolution that might end in, well…not keeping yet another resolution, I have another method for transformation you might consider. Using this method, you’re going to decide what NOT to do in 2025. Doesn’t that already sound better than adding more things? With that, here’s your ever-so-brief guide to a better 2025:

Eliminate, Delegate, Automate

If you take a look at the tasks that keep you busy, busy, busy, keeping you stressed and from doing other things you may find more enjoyable, consider applying these steps to those tasks:

Eliminate
Do you actually need to do this task? In other words, are you doing it just because you’ve always done it, or has somebody else guilted you into doing it? If it’s not something that actually needs done, why not just stop doing it and see what happens? This is the ultimate stress-reducing way to transform your life. Just say “No longer!”

Delegate
If you’ve determined that a task needs to be done, are you actually the best person to do it? Chances are, there’s someone else who may be better at it than you are. They may be able to do it better, faster, or cheaper than you, but you’ve never considered ‘outsourcing’ this task. This can be a very powerful strategy for the person who is always busy and becomes frustrated by having to do it all. Chances are, you don’t; someone else can and would be happy to.

Automate
This is a form of leverage that has become much more powerful thanks to technology. Applying automation to a task can ensure that it gets done right every time without you having to do it manually. Remember writing checks each month to pay all of your bills? Now you’ve automated most of your financial life through automatic bill-pay and electronic fund transfer (EFT). Imagine other areas of your life where this principal can be applied.

If you’re interested in examples of areas where this process has benefitted others over the years, here are just a few.

Hire a lawn service.
Most people spend hours every week cutting, trimming, and cleaning up their lawn. But who says you need to mow your own lawn? Not only does outsourcing lawncare free up time and reduce stress from not having to do the work, but you’ll no longer need to own, maintain, and store lawn equipment. It could also prevent an injury if you hire someone else. [Note: many retirees think they need to move to a condo when the maintenance of their lawn becomes ‘too much.’ It’s likely much more cost effective to stay in your home and hire a lawn and snow removal service than it is to pay the many thousands in moving costs.

Invite Alexa into your life.
Adding an Amazon Echo device in your kitchen means you’ll have music available by voice command while you’re cooking and doing dishes. Another great feature is the shopping list. When someone removes the last gallon of milk from the fridge, simply say, “Alexa, add milk to our shopping list.” When shopping at the store or building a shopping list to have groceries delivered, simply open the app on your phone to find a shopping list full of needed items. No more paper lists and arguments about having forgotten to write it down when the milk ran out.

Commit ALL tasks to the calendar.
In our business, there are incredible numbers of recurring and important tasks to remember throughout the year. For example, our professional licenses require that we complete continuing education courses. We have deadlines for writing and publishing newsletters, state regulatory agency filing requirements, bills to pay, RMDs to calculate for our over-73 clients, investment accounts and annuities to monitor, and on and on. Trying to keep all of these tasks straight can be a nightmare. A number of years ago, we applied this Eliminate-Delegate-Automate process to our business and identified every task we do in a year, all the way down to the seemingly mundane. From there, we added every task that’s required of us (and many that we do just because we love you) to our calendar system, with notes about how to complete the task and when. This meant that there was no longer a need to remember because the automation of the calendar system does the remembering for us. Now we simply follow the system we created to ensure that we’re carrying out our work at the highest level possible.

As you can see, there is no limit to the efficiencies gained by applying this simple process to your life. What’s great is the power that comes from knowing that you’re no longer a victim to busy-ness; you’re choosing to run your life in a way that suits you. It’s a powerful way to get you doing more of the tasks that you want to do and not just those you need to do.

Here’s to an amazing 2025!