When the “New Year” Meets Your Real Life

When the “New Year” Meets Your Real Life

By the second week of January, most people already know whether their “new year” plans fit their real life.

The fresh-start feeling from January 1 is usually long gone. The strategy decks are back in their folders. The inbox looks like it always does. The same meetings pop up. The same distractions reappear. The same surprises cut into the time you thought you had.

This is often the point where leaders start to feel behind. It is also the point where the most useful information starts to show up.

Not in your goals. In your environment.

What Your Calendar Is Really Saying

In my Sunday post, I wrote that your calendar rarely lies. That was not a throwaway line.

A strategy is what you say matters. Your calendar is what actually shows what matters.

Look at your calendar for this week and ask yourself a few questions:

Where are you spending time with your highest-impact people?
Where are you making space for the thinking you say you need to do?
Where are you still tolerating meetings or requests that do not match your current priorities?

You can give a speech about clarity. You can present a plan. You can set goals. But the culture you create, for yourself and your team, is shaped day to day by what you reinforce and what you allow.

That is your operating system.

Strategy vs. Operating System

Most leaders have been through some version of a strategic planning process. Fewer have taken the same care with the operating system that will either support or erode that strategy.

By “operating system,” I mean the real conditions people work inside. Things like:

• How decisions are made

• How priorities are communicated

• How interruptions are handled

• How meetings are run

• How feedback actually happens

• How much time people truly have to think and act

You can have a thoughtful strategy and still exhaust your team if the operating system is built on constant urgency, unclear expectations, and a calendar that belongs to everyone except the people responsible for the outcomes.

This is why “try harder” rarely works past the first ten days of the year. Effort cannot carry an environment that works against it.

Tolerations Tell the Truth

One simple way to see your operating system is to look at what you are tolerating.

Tolerations are the small, repeated frictions you allow to persist. Individually they seem minor. Together, they shape the culture:

You might be tolerating meetings without clear purpose.
You might be tolerating constant “quick questions” that derail deeper work.
You might be tolerating a lack of preparation because it feels easier than enforcing a standard.
You might be tolerating vague ownership because naming it feels uncomfortable.

None of these show up in the strategy document. They show up in people’s calendars, in their actions, and in how they experience you as a leader.

The second week of January is often when tolerations become visible again. The question is not whether they exist. The question is what you do with them.

From Declaring What Matters to Protecting What Matters

In last Tuesday’s post, I wrote about how clarity is demanding. It requires you to exclude options and accept that some people will not get exactly what they want from you.

This week is where that idea becomes real.

It’s one thing to say “focus on these three priorities.” It’s another to dedicate time on your calendar for time needed to move them forward. It’s one thing to say “I want my managers to think more critically.” It’s another to stop joining meetings that should be handled without you.

The shift from declaring what matters to protecting what matters can be small. There is no announcement. It starts showing up when you say no, when you say not yet, and when you decide that this is no longer how we do things.

A 10-Minute Exercise for This Week

If you want a practical starting point, here is a simple exercise you can do before the week gets away from you.

1. Scan for alignment.
Look at your calendar for the next two weeks. Where is it clearly aligned with your stated priorities for this quarter? Schedule those blocks on your calendar and hold to that schedule.

2. Name your tolerations.
Circle the meetings, recurring commitments, or open blocks that you already know will be filled with the same low-value work as last year. Be honest. These are your tolerations.

3. Make one concrete change.
Cancel one recurring meeting or tighten its scope. Add one thinking block to your calendar and treat it as non-negotiable. Clarify ownership on one project so that fewer quick updates come back to you.

The point is not to rebuild your operating system in a week. The point is to start behaving like the leader you committed to be on January 1, using the calendar as your proof.

Questions Worth Asking

In Thursday’s post, I wrote about how better questions can move us further than better plans. The same idea applies here.

As you move through this week, a few questions may be worth keeping close.

What is my calendar allowing?
What am I still tolerating that I would not tolerate for someone I am leading?
If someone shadowed me for a week, what would they assume I care about most?

None of these require a new strategy document. They require a willingness to notice, and then to modify.

You do not need a perfect operating system to make progress. You need an honest one and the courage to change what no longer fits.

Talk soon,
Joe
Lead With Intention. Grow With Purpose.

Got a question or a leadership challenge on your mind?
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