Resolutions: Changing Habits & Personal Kaizen

The post treats New Year’s resolutions as a way to work on habits, not as a test of perfection. Cleff describes his own goal of speaking up less, replacing instant advice with pauses, listening, and better questions. He says he reached about 80% of that goal and is still moving between partial progress and deliberate restraint.

Reading notes

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• The author says there is always room for improvement, even if someone thinks they are already perfect.
• He questions the value of New Year’s resolutions when people often get derailed or feel bad about not finishing them.
• His change target was to exercise more restraint when speaking up in chats, meetings, and standups.
• He tried to pause, observe, listen, and ask more probing questions before chiming in.
• He says changing the habit took awareness and forgiveness.
• He describes four steps: noticing it after the fact, noticing it while doing it, thinking before acting, and then acting or not acting without thinking about it.
• He says he still moves between steps 3 and 4 and that this is good enough for now.
• His next goal is to use collaboration and consensus building more often, as a natural extension of “keep asking questions, do less telling.”
• He says a KALM retrospective helped him get feedback from people he works and plays with.
• He suggests using retrospective exercises such as Sailboat, 4L’s, or Start-Stop-Continue to identify action items and candidates for change.
• He closes by saying change is hard because old habits die hard, but conscious effort and support from friends can help changes stick.