Not Quite What I Thought It Was. Three Things I Unlearned in 2024

It’s December! And in Aotearoa New Zealand that means obnoxious Christmas tunes on repeat and the sun (finally) comes out. It’s also when every man and his dog publishes a “year in review.”

Including – this year – me!

But instead of sharing what music I listened to (embarrassingly heavy on the girl-pop, Taylor Swift included), I want to do something slightly different.

When I sat down to write a review, it wasn’t the things I’ve done or the new things I’ve learnt that stood out, but rather the things that I thought I knew, but which turned out to be less true than I thought.

So welcome to my highlights reel of what I had to unlearn during 2024:

1. Not grandiose. Small targets.
2. Not enthusiasm. Discipline.
3. Not smart. Lucky.

It’s one thing to know something intellectually, believe in it, perhaps even advocate for it at work; it’s another to really grok it. This year I had a massive breakthrough in my understanding of goals – or objectives, aims, targets, aspirations, or whatever you call them.

For some reason, I thought that personal goals were just a different beast than any good strategic goal setting process I have undertaken in a work context.

Up until this year, I bundled fitness and how cute I looked in jeans in the same category. I might pretend otherwise but in reality fitness was merely a component of appearance and not a thing in and of itself. The approach was a failure. I wasn’t feeling good in myself and I also wasn’t looking good.

And for years I’ve been attempting to address it by setting grandiose goals to somehow become a “healthy Hannah” version of myself.

I’m not sure what gave me the idea in the first place, but this year I tried something different. Instead of selecting an ambitious goal of becoming “healthy”, I picked one specific focus: Strength. (If I told you that strong was my theme word for the year would you laugh at me?)

I had a fitness goal, and here’s the twist: I deliberately ignored everything else.

No diets. No monitoring. No weight/appearance goal. No stressing. I’d not go crazy, but if I wanted dessert for breakfast, I had dessert for breakfast!

And it worked.

This is the most consistent I’ve ever been with working out. You absolutely cannot tell by looking at me (the word I’m using is “cuddly” and alternative suggestions will not be considered) but I have never been stronger. I’ll end this year having worked out at least 3 times a week, every week. For the whole year.

Now I know myself well enough to know that I absolutely would not have stuck with it if I didn’t have that one single goal. A single focus. A single commitment. No ability for me to negotiate with myself.

By making one big vague goal in previous years, I was actually just increasing the surface area for failure. If “being healthy” is the goal, then almost anything can throw a spanner in the works.

But if being strong is the goal, there’s only one avenue for failure: not working out. A single goal means there’s much less room for failure. The job is clear. The path is clear. You can’t mentally wiggle around it. Work out at least three times a week. End of story.

Which is precisely why your strategy statements shouldn’t be filled with vague and feel good stuff. Everyone needs to know what the thing is that they MUST do to make it happen. Where “improve customer satisfaction” sounds good but isn’t actionable, “decrease customer service complaints by 20%” leaves no where to hide.

Unpacking benefits and choosing precise goals makes a difference. A massive one. The process of being precise forces you to unpack the investment logic and by doing so, strengthens the entire business case.

And we all have a business case for our health, don’t we?

At the start of 2023 when I started posting on LinkedIn and writing articles, I had a backlog of things to say. Writing was a relief, an almost cathartic experience. I was getting things off my chest and topics came easily. I would frequently have multiple articles on the go at a time. My whole process was driven from enthusiasm and pent up frustration.

It was easy going.

Until this year that is.

Because this year I ran out of things to say.

It was entirely unexpected and weirdly painful. I’d been relying on enthusiasm alone and I just didn’t know what to do when it ran out. I totally believed that it was an essential part of my writing process.

So when I didn’t have enthusiasm about a topic – when I didn’t have a subject that was top of mind that I was happily nattering at my partner about over dinner, or unpicking with a friend – I hit a wall.

If I wanted to continue, then I needed to unlearn my entire approach to writing. I had to unlearn my reliance on enthusiasm and learn how to do it even when I actually just wanted to watch real housewives and drink gin. I had to feel the distraction and do it anyway.

Hannah, meet discipline.

The funny thing is, I actually pride myself on being tenacious. But there is something very different about being tenacious when someone is paying you to be so (most of my experience of being tenacious to date), and being tenacious for absolutely no good reason other than you think there’s something interesting to explore here. If no one is checking, what will you choose to do?

I haven’t quite managed to find my groove yet, not fully, but at least I know it is possible. I am finishing this year without missing an article – some are not my best work – but they were written!

I’d love to tell you that I found a magic combination of things to get me going, but that would be a lie. It took a lot of pep talks (both internal, and outsourced). And more snacks than is reasonable. I’m also lucky to have a group of fantastic women who are all building their own thing. In weekly calls we prop each other up, critique ideas, vent, and generally are just there for the ups and downs. Each chat helped to remind me why I was doing this.

But learning that I could do it even when I wasn’t bouncing-off-the-wall enthusiastic, will shape everything I do from here on out.

The question is what else do I think I absolutely need, but maybe I don’t?

A question I will continue to mull over the break.

I thought that I had done a vaguely good job at managing my career.

I set goals, hunted promotions, angled for bigger responsibilities, and chased more complex projects. In my brain I considered that I was “sought after” a measure of success. I interpreted it all as a sign that I was nailing it.

Then here comes 2024 and an engineered recession which hit Wellington particularly hard. The job market collapsed, especially for contractors. While I do think the market has been running too hot (it is probably not a good thing if every man and his dog with a year or two of BA experience could roll their way into a contract gig), I would not have chosen this level of course correction.

This wasn’t a controlled course correction, this was deliberately running the ship aground.

So I watched the economy tank, saw the roles disappear, and witnessed the carnage. I watched people – good people – lose their jobs, be restructured, worry about their mortgages, and stress about what is coming next. And I knew that if just one more thing went a bit wrong then I would be in the same boat.

My comfortable illusion that I was in control of all of this took a serious hit.

The truth is, I haven’t been smart, I just had good timing. My real career started later than most people start and it was only by accident that I found work that I could really get excited about.

It wasn’t planned, it was luck.

I was lucky that my first role was on an agile software development team. I was lucky that my first senior BA for whom I worked showed me the breadth of the role. I was lucky that my managers along the way have been supportive. And most importantly, I was lucky that I was starting after the 2008 crash and I am a white, (mostly) un-threatening female. I am Privileged AF.

Luck and privilege, not skill.

The attribution error – giving myself credit for luck – meant that I was horribly unprepared for the consequences of the recession around me. My financial nest-egg wasn’t as big as it should be; I hadn’t taken enough precautions. I wasn’t as safe as I should be. For the first time in my career, I felt scared. Genuinely scared.

Like everyone else, I’m a leaf on the wind.

I’m not sure what it will mean for the future, but it has fundamentally changed how I think about security. I won’t forget this. And I highly recommend you don’t either.

Remember this truth, even as the market starts to warm up. We are less in control than we like to think.

There’s something weirdly freeing in that realisation.

This is all just one big unlearning.

The stories we tell ourselves are probably less true than we like to pretend. Learnings from work can be applied at home. I can write even when I feel meh. And I’m far less in control of my career than I like to pretend.

Some of our stories serve us. But others hold us back.

I hope you are on your own journey to work out which is which.

But more importantly, it’s the holidays! I hope you eat cheese, go for a walk, catch up with friends and family, drink wine at the beach (if located in the southern hemisphere), have a whiskey by a fire (if located in the northern hemisphere) and generally have a nice break.

And until then: Meri Kirihimete ki a koutou ko te whānau!