Happy New Routines

Don’t make New Year resolutions,
make New Year routines!

We may be overt or closet “New Year resolutionaries”, but at some level most of us tend to plan to do something a little differently at the start of a New Year. The start of 2016 reminds us that there are life changes and improvements to be made, and with January now over, we can start to evaluate our success rate thus far!

Unfortunately, less than 10% of us manage to stick to our New Year resolutions, so this partnership between intention and reality is generally doomed! Which is a shame, because we obviously make resolutions to build on meaningful areas of our lives, so they must hold some value for us. And we know that building meaning is psychologically and physically good for us, because living a life that is perceived as being meaningful has been shown to link to longevity, psychological health and career satisfaction.

But before we rush off in the pursuit of meaning, the caveat is that for life to be meaningful it has to be coherent. Coherence has three simple components:

The route to “getting” coherence does not seem to be the resolution road, but rather, as Jan Stanley (MAPP ’10) points out, in designing routine. Routines contribute to coherence. Does routine sound boring? Yes, in the sense that it limits choice, excitement and possibilities. But it also limits distraction, flip-flopping from one thing to another, and being indecisive. Jan suggests that we design new routines that are in keeping with our New Year Resolutions, and then “let the power of repetition” take over.

“Root” the routine:

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert (19th Century French novelist)

The mundane and the routine is the safe harbour for our big adventures. And, as many of our big adventures have a financial component, financial routines are an excellent way to start our “routine” practice for 2016.

Your financial advisor is a good companion in the routine of reviewing your financial strategy at the beginning of a new year, updating your will, checking your policies and insurance cover, and ensuring that your income and expenditure is at an optimal balance. And if you are planning some life changes, or entering a period of transition in 2016, now is a good time to get a financial planning perspective on what may lie ahead.

To use a bit of poetic licence, we can then change Gustave Flaubert’s quote to read: