I hope you had a great 2024 and I'm looking forward to spending time together in 2025.
I know it's January 1st but I admit I'm not much of a New Year's resolution person. They don’t work for me! "Oh, the calendar flipped! Time to start yoga, lose 15 pounds, and stop drinking."
Yeah, right. Too big, too unrealistic! And it's not just me. According to the University of Scranton only 19% of people actually maintain their New Year’s resolutions and US News reports that 80% of all resolutions are dropped by February.
So what’s a better way to grow?
Well, it’s not about years. I say it's about months.
And it’s not about massive leaps. To me it's about little improvements. About constantly steering your ship the right direction.
I think a better way to grow is with a monthly dashboard.
What’s a dashboard?
You stare at one every time you start your car. The dashboard flashes signals to make sure your seatbelt is on, your high-beams are off, and you’re going the right speed.
Does the dashboard put your seatbelt on? Hit the brakes for you? No, of course not. You do that. The dashboard just provides real-time feedback to help you course correct along the way.
For the past few years I've written out a monthly dashboard. It’s got four focus areas on 12 things I measure with a green, yellow, or red circle each month. Green means I’m good! Yellow means I’m close. Red means I’m way off.
Part of what’s great about a dashboard is that it allows me to map out all the goals I have bouncing around in my head. A study by Gail Matthews, psychology professor at Dominican University, found that people who write down their goals and dreams on a regular basis are 42% more likely to achieve them. The manifesting effect!
The goal isn't to be perfectly green each month.
It's just to see which areas of my life need focus and then course correct along the way.
And my dashboard isn’t fancy! I write it in marker on a piece of blank paper or in my notebook.
Here’s what my dashboard looked like last month:
The middle is my ikigai. I wrote "Help people live happy lives." An ikigai is your purpose, your high level goal, the reason you get out of bed in the morning. (I talk more about ikigais here and in Chapter 4 of 'The Happiness Equation.')
And then outside the ikigai: The top two boxes are what I do. The bottom two are how I do it.
I like the mental image of the bottom boxes actually supporting the top boxes.
So what do I do?
Strong Core
For me the core of my work is writing. So the first two things I measure are publishing one new article (on somewhere like CNBC or HBR) and writing one chapter of a new book. Writing, writing, writing! And a big way I get ideas into the world is through keynote speeches. That's the 4 speech goal I have each month. Doesn't always happen but last month I was green on all three.
Fastest learning
Next! Learning. What's the fuel for your core? My goals are to stay curious by reading 8 books a month, conducting 2 deep-dive interviews a month, and having 1 new experience a month. I publish my Monthly Book Club to keep the pressure on the reading. And the interviews? That's why I designed my podcast the way I have—I get to go deep preparing and publishing interviews with people like Brené Brown, Jonathan Franzen, and David Sedaris. And one new experience? Well, that's subjective of course, but it could be anything from putting all my books into the Dewey Decimal system, taking my son to his first Flaming Lips concert, or even just trying a type of cuisine I've never tried. Open ended! And lots of months I miss here. But the goal is to push myself to stay curious and expand.
Best family
This is the box missing from the corporate charts hanging at the office. Your best self starts at home. (I've written about the importance of family contracts before, too.) For me it means being away from home less than 4 nights a month, having 4 deep airplane-mode Family Days each month, and going on one Family Adventure together. Last month I was traveling a couple weekends which earned me a yellow and red on the dashboard.
Best self
We know how airlines say to put the oxygen mask over your mouth before putting it over your kid's. That would be hard for any parent! But the airlines know something we don’t: we're no good to anyone if we don't take care of ourselves. Best Self means taking care of you. I use an app called Trainiac to track my workouts, and my goal is to do 4 workouts a week and have 4 longer cardio sessions a week. 16 a month! You can see by all the red circles I didn’t do a great job last month! I hit my workouts (thank you, hotel gyms) but my cardio and Neil's Nights Out (NNOs, discussed in the family contract) took a hit.
So that’s it!
That’s my monthly dashboard.
There are a few things I love about the system.
First, it’s for me, by me. It’s not a hard-and-fast contract. It’s a system of course correction that lets me identify trends and make adjustments to my life. If I miss my cardio three months in a row, it’s time to think: do I need to sign up for hockey? What should I do to get this on track? Or should I just swap this wholesale for something else? Maybe it's time to fold back in meditation, volunteering, or music lessons. But if it’s red just one month, I know it was just a little bump, and I can aim to improve it as I go.
In our fast-paced, frenetic world months are the perfect time where you can roughly scratch out how you’re doing on a dashboard, take a minute to zoom out, and make course corrections along the way.
And as always let's remember:
The goal is not to be perfect here.
It's just to be a little better than before.
Here's to a great 2025!
A great way to motivate this kind of monthly action is through moonshot goals.
Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!
