New year thinking

Posted by on January 2, 2009

I don’t much go for new years resolutions (Col 2:20-23 is why), but I normally take the opportunity at new year to revisit what I’m thinking about for the next 12 months.  I do this by considering again my priorities and how I’m going with those priorities and think through what I could do better and then translate this into a series of goals that I try and achieve over the next 12 months.  Each year I get a little better and more thought out at this, so I learn as I go.

Here is my list of priorities for 2009 (in order of importance):

  1. My walk with the Lord
  2. My responsibilities as husband and leader of the home
  3. My responsibilities as a father
  4. My ministry and job
  5. My health and general wellbeing

You could split the fourth one into two parts, which would possibly help work through it, but as both are something that the Lord has called me to that are subordinate to my family responsibilities, I’ve put them together in importance.

Next I might do a mini SWOT analysis of them.  SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, each of these being a title for an area to consider. For example what are the strengths and weaknesses I see in my children?  What threats to them and opportunities for teaching are there for me to consider?

I normally find that when doing a SWOT analysis, I end up with a list as long as my arm of things that I can do to to sort out the given priority.  Rather than do a million things, I’ll think about what one area should I focus on and how would I describe what success in that one thing if I was to describe it to someone else? There will be a million things I could try and do, but I can only focus on one or two things and do them well.  This becomes the goal I want to achieve for the year.

Once I have my goals, I’ll then think through what I need to do to achieve the goals, and start putting these things down on paper.  Some may be new regular habits (which may force other habits out), some may be a process where I need to do a little bit each week or month to achieve it.  This makes the goals achievable.  Without this plan of things I need to do, my chances of achieving my goals are slim.

Finally, I need to run all this by someone I can trust (generally my wife) and then get her input.  This is followed by refinement (often following "and where will you get the time to do all that?") and eventually a consensus and buy in on what I can do over the next year to meet these goals.

If you are considering doing something similar, you may need to modify the process – I’m very analytical, so this works for me – your mileage may vary, so modify it to suit your needs. I’ve written on the principles behind this before which are in part based on a variety of sources, as well as a sermon by Mark Driscoll a few years back.  Both of these are in this post, more available here.

Thank you for reading this blog – I appreciate your support, and I wish you all the best in the Lords service for 2009!

Character

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