Every January, managers make the same mistake. They create a list of 15 things they’re going to do differently. By February, they’re doing exactly what they did last year. It’s your work version of your personal New Year’s resolution, with about the same outcome.
Here’s the math: You have roughly 2,000 working hours this year. That sounds like a lot until you subtract meetings (let’s be generous and say 40%), email (another 20%), and the random fires you’ll put out. You’re left with maybe 800 hours of actual work.
That’s it. 800 hours to make this year different from last year.
So why would you scatter those hours across 15 half-baked initiatives?
The managers who actually improve focus on three habits—not goals, habits. Why habits?
Goals —> Strategy —> Plan —> System —> Habits
- Goal - This is what you hope to accomplish this year, whether it’s personal, compensation, or a BHAG.
- Strategy - Your strategy is how you you’re thinking about accomplishing your goal.
- Plan - the specific steps you want to take to implement your strategy.
- System - the series of things you’re going to do to as part of and along side your plan.
- Habits - the reflexes you’ll build up so that doing them moves you toward your goals.
Here’s an example:
Goal - My goal is to have a solid body of writing on Enterprise AI and Architecture by the end of the year.
Strategy - I want to break that down into ~50% Enterprise AI, ~50% Enterprise Architecture. A solid body of writing to me is about 80K words. Maybe I’ll do something with it, but either way it sharpens how I think on the subject, which is completely worth it to me.
Plan - If I want 80K of good content, I’m going to shoot for 100K of raw content and assume 20% gets cut. I need a direction I’m heading so I’m not always staring at a blank page, so I need an outline.
System - I need to review my whole outline once a month - like a map so I know I’m heading in the right direction. I need to look at the chapter outline once a week — this is my GPS. I need an easy way to do my word count - I prefer a Mac app called Ulysses which displays that stat (along with the goal) in it’s heads-up display. I will track my habit in my Streaks app, and I hate the red notification pip, so it’s a great reminder for me. The point of the system is to build a cockpit with the right instruments that makes it easy to stay on track.
Habit - I need to write 300 words a day, which doesn’t sound like much. But that lowers the bar enough that it’s easy to make, rain-or-shine. There’s days where I’ll crank out 1000 words easily (no harm, no foul), and there’s days where I’m beat and 300 is a strugglefest. But 300 x 365 = 109,500 words, which means I easily make my word goal.
Habits that reinforce your Manager System
1. The Weekly Review
Every Friday, 30 minutes. What worked? What didn’t? What’s the one thing you’re carrying into next week? Most managers skip this because it feels unproductive, but it can be the most productive 30 minutes of your week. If you spend the time on this on Friday, you can go into the weekend feeling complete versus starting Monday already behind. I have an on-again off-again habit of doing this on Sunday, which means my work week really starts then as I plan it out. Working on Sunday doesn’t make me feel like a winner. This year, the last thing I schedule on Friday is prep for the following week.
2. The Pre-Meeting Prep
Before any meeting: What do I need from this? What does everyone else need? Managers who prep for meetings run meetings that don’t waste everyone’s time. Before you cry “that’s an agenda!” yeah, I know, but having the discipline to put an agenda together is tough all the time. A two-question prompt is easier to answer and still moves in the right direction.
3. The Shutdown Ritual
At the end of each day, write tomorrow’s priority. Just one. Not a list—one thing. When you start the day knowing what matters, you’re less likely to get pulled into whatever seems urgent.
None of these are revolutionary. That’s the point. Revolutionary doesn’t stick. Boring and consistent does.
Want the actual templates for all three? Thursday’s subscriber-only edition has the Manager Reset Toolkit—weekly review template, meeting prep checklist, and shutdown ritual guide.
See you next week!
-Frank
