2017, a new year, and a new you. Sound familiar? It’s that time of year when we set our resolutions and hear that little voice in the back of our heads saying, “This is my year! This is the year I will lose a few pounds, start exercising more, get eight hours of sleep, wake up early, balance my work & personal life more (Never a challenge at New England Construction, right team?)…etc.” In our last blog, Mike Gorman discussed our team's attitude toward resolutions and goals. Today I want to follow up that feature and look at ways we can all triumph when we make our goals!
In three days we will say goodbye to 2016. Don’t worry, I am not about to take you down a path of complaining about the year that has passed. This topic has already been beaten to death across every social media platform and multiple news sources (real and fake.) Instead I wanted to broach a topic that focuses on moving us forward into the year to come, that is, resolutions.
The recent presidential election was the most contentious and divisive I have experienced in my 50+ years of following them. It set new lows for civility, decency and veracity. About half of the voters were disappointed and many were outraged with the results. This election continued the trend of both national and local politics of highly partisan positions on issues. Polarization on both ends of the political spectrum is increasing and moderate views get lost in the noise of today’s media – both traditional and social. To be sure, social and economic inequalities in our country exist. They are amplified and scrutinized via social media which helps to promote polarization, anger and disenfranchisement.
I was watching the CBS news program Face the Nation on a recent Sunday morning when I heard the phrase “The Tyranny of the Inbox.” The speaker used the phrase in the context of a discussion about hasty, ill-considered foreign policy communications that were driven by a need to respond to public opinion, the press or criticism from political opponents. The phrase hit 线上德扑app官网home for me and I immediately thought about its origin and impact on our personal and business lives. The emails and texts in our inboxes and cell phones are tyrannical in the way they demand our time and attention. We respond to them with varying urgency depending on our perceived priorities. Most of us allow them to constantly interrupt our attention to the task at hand. This is the “Tyranny of the Inbox.”