Did you ever consider that those who make themselves a list of New Year’s resolutions each year are set up for failure before they even start? Yep, it’s true. See, I know this, because the wisdom of the day (or some random self-proclaimed time management professional, either way) states that multi-taskers are doomed to be completely frazzled and unproductive (read: unsuccessful) because none of their multiple simultaneous tasks will be completed as well as if they had focused on one thing at a time. I always seem to develop this annoying twitch in my right eye when I read that kind of information…because I am, unabashedly, a multi-tasker. Love me anyway…
Ok, so…resolutions. It makes sense, if you’re following the “wisdom of the day,” that if you’re trying to concentrate on improving five, ten, or more things about your life all at one time, it is easy to fail. Drop the ball. Decide it wasn’t so important after all. Or…just forget one or two…or all of them. How do we prevent losing our motivation? Back to that in a minute, but first, just out of curiosity, I looked up the definition of “resolution” online. Did you know that this one humble word has anywhere from five to ah, eleven definitions? I like this word already. It multi-tasks! Ha! One of the definitions listed for “resolution” pertains to its use in medical jargon and goes like this:
“The subsiding or termination of an abnormal condition” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/resolution)
For some reason, I love this. It just seems to catch the essence of what a New Year’s resolution should be about. Don’t we make most resolutions in order to attempt to fix something we find to be “abnormal” in our lives? Resolutions are our chance to make us, our circumstances, our experiences, our relationships….better. They come from a desire to terminate the undesirable…the painful, the unhealthy, the ugly, etc.
What about our nursing careers? Have you ever made a specific resolution that pertains to your career? I’ll admit, before I started writing this article, I never really thought about it. If you take the definition above as a jumping-off point, what is it about your career that you would like to see subside or terminate? Perhaps the distance between you and the nursing community at large needs to decrease? Perhaps your fear of new processes, different paperwork (computer charting, anyone?), or complex patients needs to be terminated? What about your career is abnormal, and shouldn’t be that way? This year, perhaps a career-oriented resolution is in order. What is stopping you from becoming the nurse you envision yourself to be? Give yourself this year to work toward your ideal.
How can we keep up our motivation? How can we break our resolutions down into manageable, non-multi-tasking (*twitch, twitch*) bites that we can chew successfully without making our figurative jaw tired? I’ve heard many suggestions over the years, but this one stuck in my mind: Break down your resolution into 12 goals, and focus only on ONE goal a month that will move you toward completing your resolution. A month still too long? How about weekly goals? Whatever your choice, post your goal in a very obvious location (computer wallpaper? refrigerator?), and put reminders on your calendar, computer, or phone to change your goals as the year moves along.
At the end of the year, look back and see how far you have come!
Tags: goals, new year's, nursing career, resolutions, time management
