For most of us, the start of a new year is a time of reflection. A review of the year gone by and an opportunity to set goals for the year ahead. Intentions are good and motivation is high.
The challenge lies in the predictable loss of steam that ensues as we move past the holiday season and back into our workaday lives. Make no mistake. Setting goals is easy. Following through is the hard part.
1) Review your goals. Keep the important ones. Discard the ones that don’t make sense.

2) Prioritize. Decide what requires immediate action, what belongs in the mid-term, and what can be deferred to a much later date.

3) Organize. Figure how to best approach the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual tasks entailed in meeting your goals and resolutions for the year. Put a system in place for efficiently attending to each of these tasks.

4) Enlist help. Don’t try to tackle it all yourself. Delegate where feasible. Outsource where appropriate.

5) Share the news. Tell someone about your goals and your strategies for reaching them.

6) Create accountability. Set up a system for reporting your progress to someone who’s invested in your growth. This can be a business partner, a boss, a peer, or a spouse.

7) Celebrate your successes. When you’ve made progress toward a goal, recognize it. Take pride. Use it as incentive to keep moving forward.

8) Get feedback. Ask others how they see you and your progress. Use their input to build upon your strengths and neutralize your weaknesses.

9) Don’t obsess. Plan, prepare, and then execute. Don’t get caught up in over-analyzing or striving for perfection.

10) Give yourself a break. Remember to take time to relax and refresh yourself. Don’t run yourself so ragged that you lose focus, stamina, and creativity. They’re vital if you are to reach your goals and see your New Year’s resolutions come to life.

From Liz Bywater’s Strategies for Implementation: How to Follow Through on Your New Year’s Resolutions

The much-contested and oft-misquoted 1971 Mehrabian study indicated that there are basically three elements in any face-to-face communication: words, tone of voice, and body language. In the very specific situation in which he was testing the relative importance of these elements, words accounted for 7%, tone of voice for 38%, and body language for 55% of the message.

This study was unfortunately much maligned when people quoted it as claiming that these percentages held in any communication situation.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that much of your message can be transmitted without words. I had the pleasure yesterday evening of experiencing “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares”, a Bulgarian choral concert in New York. One piece in particular struck me because, although we couldn’t understand a word they were singing, we felt as if we understood the entire song– a traditional comic piece from the area of Shope.

Through their facial expressions, voice tones, body languages, and significant pauses, the two women on stage had us rolling in the aisles with laughter–without the benefit of a single word.

 So the next time you’re in a conversation, you might want to focus less on finding the perfect words and more on the other part of your message– how much you “drink them in” with your eyes (a la Bill Clinton), what level of interest you communicate through your body language, your voice and your expressions.

 Of course, if you’re writing an email, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game…

Have you ever felt hostile toward people who get too close to you? For instance, strangers who stand very near to you on line? How about people who take the bathroom stall next to yours when every other one is available? 

In the same manner that animals define and defend their territories, we humans develop a sense of “ownership” for the space around us. This territory, which is but a few inches, is nonetheless a sort of “personal space” bubble, and we react strongly if it is invaded. 

The size of the bubble varies by culture and by density of population. For instance, the American bubble is far bigger than its French counterpart. The German requirement for personal space is notoriously large (and even includes their car). Personal space needs tend to be smaller in all Latin countries, but not quite as small as in the Middle East, where a proverb states one must “smell the breath” of a man to know if he is to be trusted. 

As a recent article in the NY Times points out, “Scholars can predict which areas of an elevator are likely to fill up first and which urinal a man will choose. They know people will stare at the lighted floor numbers in elevators, not one another.” 

I tried the experiment myself last week, on a crowded Paris subway. When the doors opened and people poured out, I resisted the urge to move away from my nearest standing neighbor into the the newly-created space. Instead, I made myself stay in the same spot and same position, as close as we’d been when the crowd demanded it.

To my own amusement, I realized that I felt so physically uncomfortable as for the situation to be nearly painful! And despite my best efforts to stay in the absolute same position, I realized too late that my body had gotten away from me: though I would not move my feet, the rest of my body was leaning away as much as balance and gravity allowed…