Anne Marcotty
Founder and CEO @ HNW
According to a study conducted by the University of Scranton, USA, just 8 percent of people achieve their New Year’s goals!
Around 55 percent of these January resolutions are health-related, such as exercising more, eating more healthily, or getting out of financial debt, according to the science journal The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
And in terms of when we begin to struggle, social fitness network Strava found that 12 January is the day our motivation is most likely to waiver.
Unrealistic expectations are one of the big reasons why many resolutions fail – together with the fact that we make them an annual activity. But it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. What if you set up the resolutions differently, created some daily habits instead – and perhaps also tried a different topic? Here’s how to re-frame the “resolutions ritual” and succeed in 2020.
1. Pick a different resolution: Rather than setting a health-related goal, pick something that you may not have fully committed to yet, but you know you need to make progress on – like doing more business development.
2. Don’t try to make too many changes at once: To set yourself up to succeed, start with small changes and continue to build on these, or try to tackle one change at a time. Set yourself very practical goals, reflect on your progress towards these, acknowledge that changes can be hard, and that results won’t happen overnight … or even in the first two weeks of the new year!
When it comes to business development, commit to block 6 minutes every day to reach out to clients, intermediaries, colleagues, experts, and the list goes on. And adopt the “5 at 5” principle, blocking 5 minutes at 5pm in your diary to action simple follow ups.
3. Write your goals down: Writing goals down can helpyou to achieve them because it feels like more of a commitment.
A simple goal is to block time, every day, in your diary for business development. The plan is to aim for 8 weeks of daily BD express with 6 minutes first thing in the morning, and 5 minutes of follow ups every afternoon.
4. Answer these 5 specific questions: Marcelo Campos, in his Harvard Health Blog, explained that answering five specific questions can give you a push in the right direction when it comes to sticking to New Year’s resolutions.
THE QUESTIONS ARE:
To support you with your business development resolutions, check the HighNetWork APP – https://highnetwork.co.uk. It has been developed to help busy professionals build effective BD habits. HighNetWork motivates you to do business development every day, for as little as 6 minutes. Hundreds of nudges, suggestions and activities are all in the palm of your hand. BD is made easy with a selection of tailored activities and simple “how to”.
Our user study of 100 lawyers in top firms across the US and UK found that if more business development was one of their resolutions, then using the HighNetWork APP:
- created more discipline around brief and effective business development activity, mainly due to the notifications and reminders they received daily
- provided BD ideas and suggestions the professionals had not thought about doing
led to deeper client connections, and winning more work - helped group meetings be more productive and focused by using the HNW APP as a way to share business development progress and successes
- boosted motivation for business development activity, as it tracked the lawyer’s own progress against their peers, allowing them to measure their performance against colleagues.
As one law firm partner using the HNW APP said:
“Thank you for the APP. I have been so busy so it helped to have the constant reminders about Xmas cards. I managed to send panettone to men [clients] and mini candles to all women [clients]!”