While Chasing the New, Don’t Neglect the Now |
If January always feels hopeful and exhausting at the same time, this is why: It’s a new year. New goals. New strategies. Every January in boardrooms and living rooms alike, we are culturally conditioned to view the New Year through the lens of growth. We draft strategic plans to increase revenue, launch new initiatives, or devise workout plans to run a marathon. We fetishize the new.
This is why you feel busy all year and still behind. New is alluring. It gets the press release, the launch party, and the applause. Maintenance is invisible. It happens in the background, uncelebrated, yet it is the engine of sustainability.
By exclusively focusing on new growth, we are creating a structural deficit in maintenance. We are building mandates on our own time, allocating hours to the visible new goals while forgetting to budget time for the invisible labor required to maintain the baseline. For example, if you plan to run a marathon (growth), you must also goal-set your current workout regimen and the........