17.01.2018
First things first: I’d like to wish you a very happy New Year and hope that it will be a good one for you, both personally and professionally.
Let me ask you a question. How are you doing with your New Year’s resolutionVorsatzresolutions? Are you managing to keep them or have you already to revert to sth.zu etw. zurückkehrenreverted to your normal habitGewohnheithabits?
from the safetyhier: aus der sicheren EntfernungFrom the safety of Australia, where I spent Christmas and New Year, I decided not to make any New Year’s resolutions for 2018. To be honest, they haven’t worked terribly well in the past.
Instead, I made a resolution for the sixtieth year of my life, which begins today. Taking the “S” of “sixty” as my inspiration, I made a resolution that, you could to arguebehauptenargue, I have broken simply by making it.
My resolution, you see, was to take sensiblevernünftigsensible decisions over the coming year. And I fear that this resolution is itself not a very sensible decision.
What do I mean by sensible? Well, The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the word as “done or chosen in accordance with wisdom or prudenceUmsicht, Besonnenheitprudence; likely to to be of benefitvon Vorteil/Nutzen seinbe of benefit”.
I fear that this wasn’t really a sensible decision
That might sound a bit highfalutinhochtrabendhighfalutin, but to come back down to earthauf den Boden der Wirklichkeit zurückkommencoming back down to earth, I am just trying to take decisions that I don’t regret ten seconds or ten minutes later.
This doesn’t mean taking conservativehier: biederconservative or boringlangweiligboring decisions. For example, I regard my decision to go to Australia for a holiday, to visit my brother and watch England play (and lose) at cricket a very sensible one indeed.
On the other hand, trying to eat a jam doughnuthier: Krapfen/Berliner mit Marmeladejam doughnut while driving is not a sensible decision and will almost certainly lead to a minor disaster. I was really proud of myself that I resisted this temptationVersuchung, Verlockungtemptation yesterday.
Nor am I aiming for perfection. I know that I’ll probably make quite a few decisions that, on reflectionbei nüchterner Überlegungon reflection, I wouldn’t regard as sensible. But I’ll be to monitor sth.etw. überwachen, kontrollierenmonitoring my decision-making process as the year goes on and seeing if I can improve it.
Does that sound sensible to you? Or just too much like hard work?
In his blog, Ian McMaster has been commenting on global business issues since 2002. For older entries, see the blog archive on our former website.