By Tom Rich, MBA, GG12 Senior Practice Analyst
It’s January 2020! New Year's has come and gone. Endless puns have already been thrown around about how 2020 is the year to make sure you have “perfect vision” for what’s to come. While that is important, by the time you’re reading this, you likely already have your vision of what you’d like this year to look like. I could discuss how January is named for the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of transitions. One of his faces looks forward while the other looks back. Fittingly, Janus is the god of beginnings and endings. This newsletter will reach you well after the planning and goal-setting for the New Year has passed, so it’s not a timely topic. There is something disturbing that happens every year around the end of the second full week in January (Friday, Jan. 17, this year). This is something you need to be aware of and do everything in your power to avoid. This day is cynically referred to as “Quitter’s Day.” It’s when the greatest proportion of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned like lakefront properties in Chernobyl.
your hands in the air, decide to quit, and accept that status quo is here to stay.
you failed to achieve a weekly milestone, you’re missing the point. You don’t have to perfectly execute every week. You just have to do better than you did last year. For example, last year you might have missed your production goal 25 out of 52 weeks. This year, if you have the same type of goal and you only miss it 15 weeks, that’s progress.
Look at your calendar. Circle Friday, Jan. 17, in red because this day is a test of your will. Will you allow your vision to be cast aside, or will you fight? The reality is that most people quit because they slip up. They hit the buffet too hard or sleep in so they miss the morning workout; they don’t live up to the idealized versions of themselves. So, they give up. When it comes to finally obtaining the dental practice of your dreams, giving up isn’t an option you can or should explore. In fact, understand that you’re going to mess up. There will be weeks where you don’t hit your weekly goal. You can’t let that distract you. Get back up, dust yourself off, and get back on the horse. Most importantly, when you fail to achieve perfection, forgive yourself. Perfection is the enemy of progress. In other words, if you allow yourself (or your team) to entirely ditch your vision because
"Perfection is the enemy of progress. ... You just have to do better than you did last year. "
"There is something disturbing that happens every year around the end of the second full week in January (Friday, Jan. 17, this year)."
Give yourself permission to pursue progress rather than the maddening goal of never reaching perfection. Whatever you do, no matter how often you mess up or miss targets, don’t give up. As the Irish novelist Oliver Goldsmith famously observed, “Success comes from getting up one more time than you fall.” Everything you’ve ever wanted can be yours … just keep getting up.
Quitter’s Day is when all of your hoping, dreaming, and scheming for the New Year goes out the window. It’s the day you throw
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