2025 is your year

PLUS: De-bug your processes

December 31, 2024

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

  • 2025 is your year

  • Savor your victories

  • De-bug your processes

  • Freudenfreude

  • Grace Hopper as career coach

ON YOUR CAREER

2025 is your year

I like New Year’s Eve; I love New Year’s Day. January First is a stretch of snow with no footprints. We can make 2025 how we want. We can draw from the parts of our personality we admire and enjoy the most.

Imagine we are chatting in 12 months. It’s been a great year for you. Dream big - what have you achieved? Write your big goals for 2025.

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

— Grace Hopper
COMMUNICATION

Savor your victories

Pausing to savor our victories increases our self-efficacy. This is our belief that we are effective; our earned self-confidence. Savoring and celebrating strengthens memory of our achievements. This means we can more easily recall our competence when we experience setbacks. Savoring helps us be resilient. It also makes life sweeter.

What did you do really well in 2024? What are you most proud of? Now is not the moment to be too humble. Write your big achievements for 2024.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

— Henry David Thoreau
PRODUCTIVITY

De-bug your processes

Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist. She coined the terms ‘bug’ and ‘debugging’ when she removed real moths from a compiler she invented.

De-bugging is a good metaphor for life and work. We can get rid of the stuff that is not working in our careers. Eliminate busy work. Stop rescuing a colleague for their slackness. Forget a past grievance. January is a great month to de-bug your processes.

1 MINUTE TO MORE HAPPINESS

Freudenfreude

Freudenfreude is a word invented by psychologists. It incorporates the German words freude (joy) and freuden (pleasures) to describe joy experienced when learning of someone else’s success. It’s the antidote to schadenfreude. A real German word which means to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.

Good friends stand by us when we have setbacks. Great friends also feel joy in our achievements. Shared joy and celebration deepens relationships with friends and colleagues. We can choose to feel happy for others. It beats envy.

GET SMARTER

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper (1906 - 1992) completed a PhD in mathematics at Yale University. She joined the US Navy in World War 2 where she rose to Real Admiral. Hopper helped revolutionize computer science by developing programming languages that were user-friendly and powerful for business. She received many awards for her leadership and innovative work, including the National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some of Hopper’s career and life wisdom:

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We've always done it this way.’

You don't have to know everything. You just need to know where to find it.

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.