It\u2019s fashionable at this time of year to do a \u201cmy past year in review\u201d or \u201cmy plans for the coming year\u201d blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve never really seen the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cpast year in review\u201d ones remind me of those appalling Christmas Family Newsletter things that some people seem to include in their Christmas cards – a strangely narcissistic activity: \u201cTarquin went up to Oxford this year to study Economics, and Daisy has just started her photography business in Barcelona. How are your loser kids doing?\u201d, that sort of thing. I\u2019ve always wanted to do a spoof one for me and the family, and maybe I\u2019ll get round to doing it sometime: \u201cMike has now got into sherry, and rarely leaves his local park bench. He\u2019s also got a Botox habit, which is expensive but fuck me you should see his cheekbones. He\u2019s given up on museums and now spends his time working with arms dealers. He isn\u2019t as happy but at least he\u2019s filthy fucking rich\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the coming year and plans: well, many of them, but I\u2019m not sure articulating them in public helps anyone. I\u2019m realising at this rather late stage in life that I\u2019m a bit ADHD when it comes to how I spend my time: there is so much I\u2019d like to be better at and so little time that I spend a lot of my life jumping around from thing to thing and failing to do anything terribly useful. But, really, that\u2019s ok. I\u2019m not sure a strategy of any shape is going to help that – I know what I want to do with my businesses and in my personal life and articulating it in a \u201cplan\u201d isn\u2019t going to help me or anyone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides, even though I\u2019ve spent 30 years doing strategic thinking and project managing, I think there\u2019s some wisdom in the \u201cNo Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy<\/a>\u201d quote. Life happens – you can have a rough sense of direction, but actually I think it\u2019s normally better to just go with your gut. Instead of setting out in a direction, just see which way the journey takes you.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is one mantra that keeps working its way into my brain, in large part inspired by metta<\/a> practice – and it\u2019s this:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be more kind <\/em> I think that\u2019ll do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Happy 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n (* actually maybe better as: “more beings<\/em>” – this includes animals…!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s fashionable at this time of year to do a \u201cmy past year in review\u201d or \u201cmy plans for the coming year\u201d blog post.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never really seen the point. The \u201cpast year in review\u201d ones remind me of those appalling Christmas Family Newsletter things that some people seem to include in their Christmas cards … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,370],"tags":[452,368,367,450,451,243],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
to more people*, <\/em>
more of the time.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n