But this also means it is time to make the dreaded New Year’s Resolution, a solemn promise to yourself to completely change who and what you are, to be a better human being, just because it’s time to buy a new calendar. Unfortunately, most people have trouble with the follow-through, and the whole fix-your-life-right-now program falls apart.

Here’s how to make it work.

First, don’t make a vague Resolution. Don’t say you want to be a better person, be nicer, lose weight, save money, or anything a beauty contestant might say. You need to be specific. Who are you going to help? How will you help them? How much weight will you lose? How much money will you save?

Modern business wisdom says it is easier to succeed at something if it is measurable, so plug some numbers or dates into your Resolution.

Second, don’t make one big Resolution; make a lot of little ones. If you only have one Resolution, and it falls apart for whatever reason, then you’re back to square one. But if you have several Resolutions, then even if some of them fall through, you may still succeed at the others.

What should your Resolution look like, then? Let’s start with the classic “Lose Weight.” (Note: Yes, this is work-related. Your health impacts everything that you do. And your appearance impacts your self-esteem, general happiness, and how others see you and act toward you.)

So instead of saying, “This year I’m going to lose weight” or even “I’m going to lose 20 pounds,” trying saying that this year you are going to:

1. Replace soda with water.
2. Replace coffee with tea.
3. Use the stairs at work instead of the elevator.
4. Eat oatmeal for breakfast.
5. Stop getting fast food for lunch.
6. Stop keeping candy in your desk.
7. Snack on dry pretzels / popcorn instead of delicious chocolate.
8. No donuts.
9. Bring lunch from home instead of buying it.
10. Go to bed earlier. (Apparently, increased sleep can aid weight loss.)

This way, even if you only stick to only two or three items, you can still make some progress toward your ultimate goal of “losing weight.” And better yet, your Resolution list is actually a detailed game plan, which is much better than signing up at a gym to take $50 a month so you can hang out with a bunch of strangers in spandex.

Which is not ideal.

Now, let’s try something more work-focused: “Make more money.” The first thing you need to do is get some information:

1. Check your performance goals for the year.
2. Research whether your company offers bonuses for helping to find new employees, or landing new clients, or anything else specific.
3. Research what the average salary is for a person with your job title.
4. Research what your company’s full salary range is for your position.
5. Look at job postings to see whether there are similar jobs being offered with higher salaries.

You can try to earn more within your current position.

1. Earn your full performance bonus.
2. Earn a supplemental bonus.
3. Request a raise. (It may help to get technical certifications or a Master’s degree, too.)

You can try to earn more by getting promoted.

1. Find out what positions your company has that you might reasonably be promoted into.
2. Learn what responsibilities that job involves.
3. Demonstrate to your bosses that you can do that job.

You can try to earn more by getting another job.

1. Get a new job with a higher salary. (You’re familiar with this process, right? Resume, interview? You know the drill.)

This way, when you make your Resolution, you can focus on a specific goal with a specific plan for making it happen. And that’s the whole point of the Resolution, isn’t it? Making it happen?

But there are probably a lot of other useful things you could resolve to do. You could focus on your education, or your relationships with your coworkers, or just on your organizational skills. But don’t forget that half of “work life” is “life.” So you could also think about many other things outside of the office.

How about your commute? Is it too long? Too slow? Too expensive? It might surprise you how much it improves your day when you have a shorter, less stressful drive every morning and evening. You can spend a few days trying to leave home at different times, or taking different roads. You could also experiment with the buses, the metro, or riding your bike.

Maybe you’re working too many hours, long evenings, and coming in on weekends. Why is that? Is your company short-staffed? Or maybe you’re just not planning well enough, leaving you to scramble to meet deadlines on nights and weekends. Whatever the reason, I doubt it’s making you happy. Once you find the cause, you may be able to find a solution, even if the solution is for you to cut the slow-pokes out of the picture and do a little extra work during the day. Remember, more work does not necessarily mean more time.

When you take stock of your life or your job and you think about what you’d like to change, focus on the specifics, on the details. It’s unlikely that there is one Big Bad Evil Force that’s making your life difficult or unpleasant. It’s more likely that there are many Little Yet Still Annoying Forces that are chipping away at your happiness or success. So the best plan is to chip back, one little problem at a time.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Google Wave (and didn’t have or feel the need to sit through the 80 minute video when it was announced), it is the ongoing realization of the question:

 

“What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?” – Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager, Google Wave

That’s a pretty brave and bold question, because email has been around for longer than I have.

I call this an “ongoing realization of the question” because it won’t even come close to replacing email until there are more users.  When Gmail first launched, the same thing happened.  As more users were invited, its use became more widespread.  Gmail is now incredibly popular and finally came out of beta earlier this year.  Expect Google Wave to be in beta for just as long, if not longer.

The question I ask is posed in the headline, and the answer is….it depends.

The Few and Far Between

I’ve already mentioned the limited amount of users that are actually using Wave.  Unless you’re fortunate enough to have co-workers on it (or had the foresight to invite co-workers with your invites), you’re going to be either very lonely and bored, or very distracted and unproductive.

Even with colleagues on Wave, you’ll all be feeling your way through it for the first little while.  However, you will eventually have your “A-ha Moment” – and when you do, you’ll be able to collaborate together in real time and hopefully get more done in less time and with less interruption.  Maybe.

Welcome to Your New Inbox!

The way Google Wave is set up is similar to email, and one of the first noticeable consistencies is the immortal inbox.  This is where all your new waves show up, as well as where any updates to existing waves appear.  So now you can simply ignore your email inbox and check this one alone, right?  Definitely not.  Not everyone will “catch the Wave” because of the limited invites thus far, but more likely because most people inherently hate change.  Most people are not going to abandon their email inbox for years, so now you’ve got an additional one to check regularly.  Know this…email is not going away anytime soon.  It’s been here for 40 years, so it’s not ready for senior’s living just yet.  Ironically, Google Wave seems to be the one residing in the gated community right now.

I. Don’t. Get. It.

Google Wave is new.  Shiny new.  Innovation often comes at a price, and the price in this instance is the limited resource of time.

Are you going to have the time to dedicate wrapping your head around it?  Are your co-workers?  Your superiors?  If you have an inclination for learning and/or don’t mind staying late at the office, then perhaps.  There’s no real way around it.  There is a strong likelihood that Google Wave can be of great benefit to an organization, but it’s going to some maturation of both the service and the skills of those using it to make that happen on a large scale.

There is also the certainty that, no matter what, some people are not going to get it.  Period.

We’re All Wave Babies

As this service hits the ground…um…walking, patience and exploration are the essential watchwords to keep in mind.  It’s buggy, but it is a preview.  It’s sluggish, but it is in development.  It’s limited in user base, but it is seemingly limitless in possibility.  I will say that I had my epiphany with Google Wave last week and have started planning projects online with fellow “wavers.”

I’ve found that I’ve agreed to brainstorm initially on Twitter, and then we all quickly move to Wave so we can do it in real time and in line as opposed to back and forth.  I’m even collaborating on scripts.  Google Wave can be a great collaborative tool with the right ingredients in play, and I have no doubt that “can be” will gradually evolve into “is.”

Will Google Wave work for you?  With all the stars aligned, it will.  Once you’re through the initial exploratory phase and have a few people who you would like to (or need to) collaborate with, it’s going to increase productivity in some form or another.  The learning curve is going to be steeper for some more than others, but that’s to be expected.  All of these elements will impact how quickly Google Wave will be an integral part of your work environment.  Right now, as with any new technology (and make no mistake, this is a technology), there are far more questions than answers.

I do have one, though.  Right now Google Wave is just as much about play as it is about work.

Maybe that’s not the right question. Perhaps it’s not how you decide, but when. I’ll suggest that the one of the worst times to decide your top priority for right now is right now. It’s usually more effective to have already made your priority decisions beforehand. If this is true, then the best time to decide what your first task should be in the morning is the day before — ideally at the end of the work day.

Are You a Morning Person?

The blogosphere is teeming with self-help posts on how to become an early riser, but most people are not early risers, as determined by their circadian rhythms.

About 10 percent of the population are natural early risers, or “larks.” They wake effortlessly between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., experience their peak energy between noon and 2:00 p.m., and start feeling sleepy between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. About 20 percent of the population are late risers, or “owls.” They naturally wake between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., and feel like going to bed between 2:00 a.m and 4:00 a.m.—or they would if their work situation allowed for it. Even with eight hours’ of sleep, they feel sleep deprived by early morning schedules. The other 70 percent fall in a continuum between early and late risers, and can adapt to either early or late work schedules without much difficulty.

This means that for most employees and managers, making decisions at the start of the work day is suboptimal, and requires more effort than the same decision making done in the late afternoon. It’s better for them to think later, and do earlier. Work with your natural energy cycles rather than against them.

Set up your first task for tomorrow morning

The more setup time you eliminate, the less inertia you’ll have to overcome, and the more flow you’ll experience. If you need to edit images in Photoshop tomorrow morning, boot it up before you leave work this evening. If you know the first image file you need to edit, open it now. When you turn on your monitor in the morning, you won’t have to ask yourself, “What should I do first?” The file right in front of you is your one-item to do list.

If you were going to email someone tomorrow morning to get information you’ll need later that morning, send it now. It doesn’t matter if the recipient won’t answer it until tomorrow anyway. The point is that you won’t have to break your momentum on your most important task tomorrow just to finally send the email, and you won’t have to remind yourself to do it.

Declutter your workspace

End-of-day decluttering isn’t comprehensive elimination of every item that’s arguably nonessential. It’s getting things out of your visual field that aren’t relevant to your immediate focus. Tomorrow morning, I need to work on a new spreadsheet in Excel, so this evening I closed and filed the spreadsheets and documents I worked on earlier today; that way, I don’t have to sort through them tomorrow to get to the new file.

If you’re not a methodical filer, it helps to have at least one drawer where you can put all the paperwork on your desk that’s not related to the one task you’re currently working on. There’s nothing manifestly wrong with having a messy desk, but if you can corral it and segregate your piles from the paperwork you’re actively using (using at that moment, not in general), you’ll find it much easier to focus on the task on hand.

Estimate how much time needed

It’s usually not necessary to block out the entire morning to finish your critical task. Before doing it, ask yourself how much time it will take, and write the answer down next to the task entry. Whether or not the time estimate is accurate is less important than creating an awareness of the time you’re spending.

If you estimate that a task will take an half an hour, but it actually takes 45 minutes, you’ve got some valuable feedback. Either your time estimates are unrealistic, or you’ve succumbed to distraction. If it’s the latter, you can reexamine what transpired in that time and identify the source of distraction. If that distraction is something routine, figure out how to block or eliminate it the next time you need to perform a similar task.

Suppose the time estimate was unrealistic. Suppose further that you underestimated the completion times for all of your activities by 50% on average. This is a huge source of why so many people experience time famine. Because their time estimates are based on intuition rather than explicit examination, everything takes longer than assumed, leaving no time for things that matter—so they get pushed into the neverland of “tomorrow.” Reasonably accurate time estimates don’t require deep analysis. It’s usually enough to consciously ask yourself, “How long will this take?”, instead of operating from hunch.

Visualize the next morning’s actions

This one’s optional. Relax, it’s not as New Age as it sounds. The point of visualizing yourself carrying out your most important task in step-by-step detail isn’t for motivation, but for clarification.

Mentally see yourself performing each action necessary to complete the task. Visualization doesn’t have to be lengthy, 3-D or in Technicolor, but it should be complete. You’re looking to ensure that you have all the steps, and that you won’t be stuck due to a missing piece. If it helps, visualize yourself successfully completing the task, then work backward to the first step. This will highlight and identify any missing dependencies in subsequent actions.

Anticipate and eliminate distractions

Does your work get derailed in the morning? Where’s the monkey wrench? If you anticipate getting distracted by your email tomorrow morning, close the email client this afternoon don’t open it until after you complete your most important task. If secondhand employee chitchat will break your concentration, grab some headphones and (preferably instrumental) music queued up for tomorrow morning to neutralize it.

Even if you’re not a morning person, how you start the day sets the tone for how the day unfolds. Use the end of your work day to set up how you start your day. Get the planning out of the way ahead of time, so that you can start your day by diving right into action.