How packing for vacation led to my 2019 business strategy

I returned from Hawaii last week where I spent 9 nights over the Christmas and New Year break with my family. The plan was beach, pool, exploring, dining and relaxing.

Prior to going I posted a short YouTube clip as part of my daily ‘Sel Unfiltered’ on how I think packing for your vacation should be a lesson on how to plan for the year ahead.

The analogy related to the packing tip of putting everything that you want to take on the bed and then cutting it in half! We never need everything we take on a trip and it’s annoying to drag so much gear with us for no reason.

My suggestion was to take this packing lesson and use to for your business planning by writing everything you want to achieve in your business in 2019 on a whiteboard and not just halve it but rub out 75% of it and only commit to the remaining 25%! This way you can focus solely on achieving these goals fully and with excellence ending the year feeling great and accomplished.

I am sure, like me, you end the year with a heap of goals and projects that not only didn’t get finished but also were never started. We have great intentions but in reality, we always overestimate what we can do in a year, especially when we have that new year motivation!

When I packed, I thought I had packed light. It turned out I actually wore only 10% of what I took!

I didn’t need so many variations because I didn’t do that many different varieties of activities plus I was too chilled to worry about changing my outfits!

What was important was the quality of my time undertaking the activity (I spent more time at the pool and went straight to dinner in bathers and sarong rather than cut my pool time down to go and get changed)! The change of outfit would not have enhanced my dinner in anyway, but it was awesome getting that extra hour playing with my kids in the pool.

The same goes in business. The satisfaction comes from fully engaging with a project or task rather than doing a heap of things with half the time and effort it requires.

Many businesses have their offsite strategy days in January. I suggest when you all get excited about all of the things you are going to achieve this year that you remember that your level of refreshed feeling is somewhat misleading and can lead you down the trap of over estimating reality.

The strategy is not in deciding what you are going to achieve this year but rather what you choose not to achieve.

Photo by Arnel Hasanovic