Open For Business

‘Coming Soon’, Coming Soon, Open for Business!

This is usually the sequence we see when a new business or initiative is about to be launched. The noticeable stickers make one wonder what is coming soon. In some cases, there’s no additional information so your interest is piqued but at other times, there is a poster that shows the vision of what to expect.

‘Coming soon’ announcements are designed to get you excited and to a point when you can’t wait to access what’s on offer.

This kind of reminds me of when we are approaching the end of a year. There is an anticipation that the new year is ‘coming soon’, we build the new year up in our minds, some of us can’t wait to draw a line under the old year, many quickly come up with their resolutions and write out their goals and plans.

Then the new year arrives which often feels like just another day. We take a day or two to start to feel like it’s really the new year and many may still get dates wrong when writing them down but eventually the penny drops and we really realise the new year has started, whether or not we are ready for it.

My question today is, now that the new year’s ‘coming soon’ announcements have passed, are you finally ‘open for Business?’

I found myself thinking about this yesterday during a car journey while still feeling the effect of back to back Flu reinfection; and yes this is despite taking all my winter and covid jabs. For me, it felt like the year hadn’t really started as I haven’t been firing on all cylinders.

Don’t get me wrong, I have honoured my public and work commitments but there are some personal goals that have been impacted by this. Also speaking to a few people in the past week, one of them hadn’t fully recovered from a chest infection but was getting back to work, another person talked about needing to reassess their goals to make sure they remain realistic and a third person suffered a bereavement.

This is because there are things we can’t always plan for; yes we make allowances for rest, holidays and downtime but we don’t necessarily build in time for sickness or loss of a loved one as no one looks forward to that.

How do you work out how much time to build in to your plans in anticipation of factors and obstacles outside of your control including sickness? Many companies have a sickness absence target and they try and support their people to make sure their target is delivered.

Not everyone is open for 2023 business for several reasons, some within their gift and some not. But at some point we all have to reassess and draw a line under any time lost so that we can finally be ready and open for business.

For me this entails finally doing everything I can to get rid of the remaining symptoms and reassessing what has fallen through the cracks, plus any new and unexpected initiatives. I have had to decline a couple of opportunities by asking myself if they would serve my long term goals especially now that I have less time to deliver even more initiatives.

As we come to the end of January with eleven months to go, here are some questions to ponder on:

Have you been open for 2023 Business? If not why?

What do you need to do to help you recover any lost ground?

What do you need to do to start firing on all cylinders for the coming months?

What lessons have you already learnt this year that you can take into the remaining months?

Are you working on the right things at the right times and in the right ways?

What do you need to stop doing or say no to which will help you focus on what matters?

Finally cut yourself some slack if factors outside of your control have thrown a spanner in your wheel. Take the time to recover or heal from your loss. As long as there is another day, there is hope for recovery of any lost ground.

Thanks for reading my post, here’s to a happy and healthy week.