S01E05: Happy New Year's Eve!
Rubber balls and glass balls. Some reflection to close the year.
Hi hi,
Happy NYE!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the holiday season and have stocked up on energy for 2024. If you haven’t enjoyed the season, that’s okay too; I hope you find some comfort over the coming weeks.
My friend harassed me yesterday for skipping Five Years an MBA* on December 17. In response, I told her the newsletter was a rubber ball. You don’t want to drop a rubber ball, but you can when you must – it’ll bounce back. Dropped glass balls on the other hand will shatter. And that is the biggest lesson I’ve learned this year.
Let’s detour for a bit. My favourite thing about birthday eves and New Year’s Eve is that they offer a great opportunity to reflect on the past year. They also offer a great opportunity to set new goals for the coming year. If you haven’t read James Clear’s Atomic Habits, can I recommend that you do so? It’s a great book that offers a useful framework for achieving (and maintaining) new outcomes by focusing on inputs.
Back to my biggest lesson from 2023. This year had a low bar to clear as I just needed it to be better than 2022. It ended up being pretty decent. Oreofe was born early in January and had me wrapped around her little fingers from her first moment. I came to terms, in a difficult and roundabout way, with the nature and fact of my dad’s death. We survived the sleepless nights, frayed tempers, and disrupted schedules that accompanied becoming a family of three. I stepped into a leadership role at work. And I finished and published my dad’s book.
All of the above came at a cost. Oreofe’s arrival in particular did more for my productivity and ability to prioritise than any other thing I’ve experienced. And a significant part of that was recognising I could no longer do many things I wanted to do, but also that whenever I had a free moment (such as when she was at nursery or asleep), then I had to be incredibly focused. But I’m starting to pre-empt my next email and we’ll come back to all of this.
If you haven’t done so yet, I would like to encourage you to spend some time over the next few hours reflecting on 2023.
What were your highest moments? What worked well in your personal and professional life? What do you want to double-down on in 2024?
What were your lowest moments? What didn’t work so well? What should you stop doing in 2024?
I would also like to add three specific actions too:
Tell someone you love them.
(If you’re feeling ready to,) forgive someone who has wronged you.
Ask someone to forgive you.
Thank you for reading my emails this year. And for those who write back, thank you for writing back too. See you in 2024.
Koye.
PS: * Five Years an MBA is all written and ready to send! I didn’t queue it before traveling to Nigeria and then got swamped with the book launch on the 16th/17th in Ibadan. I’ll send it at some point before the series ends.