Revolutionary Resolutions for 2024
Revolutionary Resolutions for 2024
3 Habits to Unleash Potential in the New Year
Every year, I find it’s worth reflecting not just on goals for the new year, but habits, mindsets, and values. The latter are the core of long-term growth. In the spirit of living “on purpose,” I wanted to share three habits that might be appropriate for any of us to embrace in 2024—habits that I believe can apply to us as individuals as well as to the organizations with which we work.
Speak Truth in Love. Without prioritizing truth, people and organizations fail. People who fail to acknowledge and respond to reality stagnate or get worse. Organizations that prioritize harmony over truth often decline and lose to competition. But people and organizations who fail to deliver truth in the spirit of love—genuine care for the other person—become insufferable, unstable, and ineffective. I once worked at a hedge fund that was adamant in its pursuit of “radical transparency,” but had massive problems because so many people used that otherwise noble admonition to be mean-spirited, competitive, insensitive, and vicious. On the contrary, it’s often the case that an organization is so obsessed with getting along it fails to foster tough conversations about performance or make realistic assessments of its competitive positioning. And people who surround themselves with “yes” men or women—those who care for them but decline difficult interventions and only encourage and reinforce their behaviors—live in delusion and reinforce their own negative behaviors.
It's a service to others to speak truth to them, but only when it’s done in the context of a genuine regard and care. If you care for people, you own them the truth. If you want them to absorb that truth, they must know you care. This year, my hope is to steadily improve on cultivating my own ability to speak truth in love in the spirit of improving myself and the people and organizations with which I work.
Embrace Immersive Curiosity. One of the traits I prioritize the most in hiring is curiosity. Someone hungry to learn from the world around them—who sees opportunities for learning in every situation or person they encounter—will ultimately figure things out. They won’t make the kinds of mistakes the incurious make—those who can’t see (or don’t care about) the gulf between their confidence and competence. And they will surface new problems and opportunities faster and better than someone who is complacent in their expertise.
I recently wrote about the importance of culture to corporate culture. In 2024, I want to be relentless in my own curiosity—learning from everyone and everything I encounter, desperate to understand the gaps in my own understanding, and intent on seeing the wonder in every aspect of the world. I want this to be “immersive,” a day-to-day part of the fabric of who I am, as essential as oxygen to the way I work. And I want to try to encourage that same quality in the organizations and people around me.
Push to the Point of Failure. I recently read the Arnold Schwarzenegger book Be Useful, some tips from the Terminator about serving others well in life melded with tidbits from his own life story. Some of the most interesting passages are about the approaches he took in his early days of bodybuilding. In trying to build muscle, Arnold would push himself to the point of failure—he’d do reps until his muscles quit and he couldn’t lift the weight anymore. It’s at that point, he says, you know your muscles will grow and you’ll make progress. This lesson was echoed, in a different way, by Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential. Interviewing polyglots, one of the things he learned was that frequent failure in practice was essential to rapid growth—if you play it too safe and only do things you know you can do well, you ultimately never make progress.
Obviously, you can’t do this in every area of life. This is not an admonition to myself (or anyone else) to burn out or blow up. And there are areas of life you should accept limitations (e.g., getting enough sleep, etc.). But in areas I want to grow this year—physically, professionally, or intellectually—I want to push myself every day to find the point of failure, unafraid of how that makes me look or feel. It’s only by challenging limits, by trying new tolerances, that we as people and groups can make meaningful and important progress. And for organizations it’s only by testing limits to the point of failure that meaningful growth and change are realized.
Happy New Year to all! Whatever your resolutions, I wish you a blessed and fruitful 2024. Live is worth living “on purpose” and I’m grateful to be on the journey with you.