Intentions for the new year

With a new year, many people make resolutions or set goals, both personally and professionally. Instead, I'm setting intentions for the year. Somehow, that seems friendlier and more likely to happen.

Resolutions seem to have become a joke—something you decide to do to make yourself "better." These often get abandoned even before the end of January.

Goals, strategies, objective: those all seem to have mixed meanings and be used somewhat interchangeably by different people. For example, what comes first, the goal or the strategy? Do strategies support goals or goals support strategies? Where do objectives fit in? Is an objective part of a goal or is it the overarching thing that everything else should support? 

When you are on over-thinker, which I am, it just starts a circular session that devolves into internet searches, multiple outlines trying to make objectives support goals and/or goals support objectives, plus evermore granular tactics. The result? No end point where something actually gets done. 

An intention though—that seems workable. We'll find out at the end of the year if that is the case. (To quote my dad, "What's this 'we' jazz? You have a rat in your pocket?") By we, I mean me and any of you who end up coming along for the ride.

Back to intentions. 

According to Meriam-Webster online:

in·ten·tion 

noun\in-ˈten(t)-shən\: the thing that you plan to do or achieve : an aim or purpose

Of course the first entry in the longer definition provides "resolve" as a synonym, but I'm ignoring the reality that I'm using a different word for the same thing. While the two words are related, they have subtle differences.

My intentions are the things I am turning my attention to this year. That means when I'm not doing client work or the accounting and office tasks involved in being a business, I should spend time on those intentions. Client work always comes first, plus I volunteer on my professional board and with a local nonprofit, so having a focus for the times I'm not working billable or volunteer hours will hopefully let me feel I'm accomplishing something.

Case in point: I intend to do more writing this year. Part of that intent is to add a regular schedule of blog posts, of which this is the first. The blog will eventually end up linked to my website. (Intention 2 = get new website launched.)

That's all the time I have right now, and this first post already seems long, so back to the work I get paid to do. 

Happy New Year! Do you make resolutions in January?

T