New Year’s Resolutions Are Houses Built on Hope and Quicksand

🎟️ Like Lottery Tickets, 

New Year’s Resolutions Are Houses Built on Hope and Quicksand

Let’s be honest.

New Year’s resolutions aren’t strategy.

They’re emotional IOUs—underwritten by hope—written to ourselves when the year ends and the guilt of what we didn’t accomplish shows up.

Every January, we say:

“This is the year. I’m going to…”

But there just isn't any follow through

🪦 By February, most resolutions are already dead. 

🪦 By year-end, almost all of them are.

Not because people are lazy.

Because there was never a plan.

❌ No system

❌ No feedback loop

❌ No adjustment when life inevitably pushes back

Resolutions are just snapshots of optimistic desire:

•  “this year I'm going to lose weight”

• “this year I'm going to get in shape”

• “this year I'm going to stop smoking”

Hope and optimism fill the gap where a plan should be.

I stopped building professional outcomes on hope a long time ago.

• Hope is emotional, unreliable, and unpredictable.

• Planning is operational. 📐 Outcomes are measurable.

High-performing leaders don’t make resolutions.

• They cast a vision—and build a plan.

• That’s why I use Deming’s PDSA:

 Plan. Do. Study. Act.

• Not once.

• Not in January.

• All year—whether motivation shows up or not.

Vision sets up the destination.

PDSA is how you navigate the mountains, swamps, and obstacles along the way.

If your 2026 plan still starts with:

 “My resolutions for 2026 are…”

You’re not planning.

 You’re buying another lottery ticket 🎟️

 —and calling it a strategy.