Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders activate performance and engagement without burning out. We run bootcamps that deliver confidence tools, community. We deliver keynotes that inform and inspire, and we do pulse checks to help you build custom blueprints that unlock your team's best performance. Just let me know what you need. So as we start to roll into year end, this season always makes me think of my experience as a kid.
Adults around me were always paddling on about how shocking it was that yet another year was wrapping up. Those were the years when about 17 years seemed to pass between each birthday, and now here I am the elder paddling on. But here we are on the precipice of yet another year closing with a new one. Looming for me, and I know for many this season, triggers an instinct to reflect, to plan, and to start something big from a clean slate.
And I'm all for it, but what I am not really for is resolutions. I've talked about it before, big promises that we make to ourselves in spite of all the data that preaches extraordinary rates of failure. I just think we deserve better than that. I'd rather set myself up for success. I want something to celebrate. So today, let's talk about taking an anti resolution approach to kicking off the new year.
And hey, even if you're listening off season, I promise there's intel in here, whatever the month you're in. So instead of a resolution, start with an experiment. Here's where we flip the script. Instead of setting a giant intimidating resolution, try committing to just a single experiment. This is a short term focused. An experiment is short term and focused. It's designed to test one idea at a time.
The goal isn't to overhaul your life or your work overnight, but to gather insights that help you move forward. Here's how you might design a workplace experiment. Define a question you wanna answer, like, what would happen if I started contributing one idea in every team meeting? Then set a timeframe. Keep it short. Two weeks to a month is usually plenty of time to get you some meaningful data. Track your results after each meeting.
Jot down what worked, what didn't, and what feedback you got, and then evaluate and adjust. At the end of the experiment, ask yourself, did this make an impact? How might I refine or scale this effort moving forward? So maybe you wanna get better at public speaking instead of a resolution, like become a confident speaker by the end of the year. Try designing an experiment. Maybe your question is, what happens if I rehearse a short update out loud before every meeting for the next two weeks?
Weeks? Your timeframe is two weeks, and your outcome to track is, do I feel more confident in meetings? Am I receiving clearer follow-up questions or feedback experiments like these? Take the pressure off and they give you actionable insights to guide your next steps. Next, focus on systems over goals. Goals are great for setting direction, but not so much for guiding action. You can't control the outcome, but you can control the system you use to get there.
So instead of setting a goal like I wanna land a promotion, focus on systems like tracking your wins weekly so you have evidence of your impact to talk about in an interview and setting up regular feedback sessions with your leader and practicing your negotiation skills ahead of promotion conversations. A system is something that you can do consistently regardless of whether the end result happens on your timeline. And when you focus on systems, the outcomes tend to take care of themselves.
Next, build a personal scorecard. Let's talk about staying on track because even the best systems can fizzle out if we don't check in with them. This is where a personal scorecard becomes helpful. It's a simple tool to help you track your consistency and celebrate your progress. Here's how you can set one up. Start by writing down your systems. So maybe you wanna do weekly check-ins with your manager.
You wanna send one or two networking messages a week, and you wanna dedicate 20 minutes each day to learning a new skill. Then track your actions At the end of each week, give yourself a score. Did you follow through? And if not, what got in the way? And finally, celebrate progress, not perfection. It's okay if you miss a few here or there. Just notice the patterns and adjust as needed. A scorecard helps keep you accountable while giving you space to adapt. Next, see everything as data.
So if we're honest, no system is going to be perfect. You'll skip a day, you'll miss a target. You'll have a week where everything goes sideways and that's normal. But instead of treating those moments as failures, treat them as data. Ask yourself what got in the way? Was the system realistic? Is there a tweak that I could make that might make this easier to follow through on?
For example, if you are looking to block time for deep work, but you keep getting interrupted, maybe the problem isn't your schedule, but the lack of boundaries with your team. So use that insight to experiment with a focus time policy or a status update to let colleagues know when you're really unavailable, whatever the result you got, it's just feedback. It's there to teach you. And finally, check in with yourself. Let's talk about keeping your systems relevant throughout the year.
I recommend scheduling quarterly check-ins with yourself to reflect and realign. Here's how I like to do it. I block time on my calendar at the end of March, june, September, and December, and here are some prompts I like to use to guide my own reflection. What systems are working well? What's delivering the impact that I expected and what isn't? And what adjustments or new experiments can I try next?
Think of these check-ins as pit stops, not to change direction completely, but to refine and refocus and make sure the systems you put in place are still serving you. I hope there was something helpful in here for you and I wish you an amazing setup for the new year. Join me next week for another great episode. Until then, visit my website@leadabovenoise.com.
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