Let me tell you something I rarely admit on social media.
In the last days of December, on a cold morning, I opened my brand-new planner—the serious one—and wrote in big letters:
“2026 resolutions: focus on what truly matters, quality meetings, time for myself, less social media scrolling, more exercise.”
Sounds familiar, right?
The first week—still in 2025—went well. I was on holiday, and time felt different.
The second week, January kicked in, and my to-do list started knocking loudly at the door.
By the third week, I found myself in a call at 8:40 PM, with half the to-do list unfinished and my resolutions lost somewhere between two calendar lines and a meeting. I laughed—alone—but I also felt a bit disappointed.
That’s when a little light turned on. That yellow light we all wait to see at the end of the tunnel. Mine finally did.
Because I’m not lazy. I know how to be disciplined. But in reality, I was waiting for things to change on their own, without actually doing anything differently. You know the saying: you want different results, but you keep doing the same things.
You see, those annual resolutions we proudly write on the first page of a new planner are like beautifully packaged strategies—with no budget, no ownership, and no KPIs. Good intentions, zero infrastructure. We repeat them until we almost convince ourselves we’re motivated, as if motivation were a resource you could simply pull out of a drawer at any time.
Spoiler: motivation is not a resource.
It works like adrenaline after a great kick-off—intense, short-lived, and highly unpredictable. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
I laughed when I remembered a client I worked with. He runs an IT company with about 20 people. A serious, capable leader. At the beginning of the year, he told me with half a smile:
“I’ve decided to read more this year.”
For two months, I kept asking him how reading was going (he even showed me his book list). Every time, he replied with a quarter-smile:
“Do you know what I read the most? Emails.”
A month later, things looked different. He had already finished two books. The change came from something seemingly trivial—a small, almost insignificant step. He simply changed the location of his remote control and his phone. The remote went into a drawer in the bookcase, the phone stayed on his desk, and a book was placed on the coffee table in front of the couch.
The result? Without any conscious effort, his evenings changed. The system won over willpower.
This is a lesson we often ignore: our behavior follows context before it follows internal dialogue. You can have the clearest quarterly objectives, but if your daily environment contradicts them, they remain on paper. It’s like a strategy without buy-in.
Do you have personal or professional goals written on the first page of your planner? Great.
Start with one small step. Any step.
You want your team to improve their behaviors? Give them the right context.
You want constructive feedback? Offer it first.
You want active listening? Practice it first.
Context—the external world—is full of stimuli and far more powerful than the inner monologue that starts with “from tomorrow, I will…”. We live in the present, so why do we rely on resolutions written for an uncertain future?
What was my small step?
I wanted to exercise more. I started cautiously—but I started. Instead of 60 minutes on the bike, I began with 20.
And you know what changed? My energy.
The truth is simpler than it looks on slides: you don’t need to reinvent yourself. You need to redesign your system—without drama, without grand promises, just with small, realistic actions rooted in the present.
So tell me, honestly: what small detail in your daily environment is quietly sabotaging you every single day?
And what could you change starting right now?
