What was your January highlight? Mine might surprise you…
January! What a strange little month; I say little but it has 31 days so it’s up there with being one of the longest in the year and it seems even longer because of the cold and darkness (at least for us Northern Hemispherers).
That said, it’s a month when so many of us make resolutions and then invariably many of us give up on them long before the month is out.
That’s a weird thing about resolutions, you generally can’t achieve them by the end of the January but you can certainly fail them — that doesn’t seem fair.
Where are you going with this Faris?
When it comes to highlights for the month then, it can be slim pickings.
Particularly in a year where we are all waiting with baited breath for the upcoming recession that is looming, a bit like being at the opposite end of a pool just as they start the wave machine.
That said, if I sift through my first month of 2023 there is a fair bit to be happy about:
- Picking up a couple of new clients
- Reunions with several friends I’ve not seen in years
- Continuing with a good level of exercise
- Breaking the 80 podcast barrier
- Being signed up for 3 more speaking events
- Getting FQ trademarked
- Introducing 2 new people into my Solopreneurs Club (a networking club for Solopreneurs that I created a few years back)
- Securing a pay-out on a long running minor dispute
- Completing my first set of therapy and putting in place some changes to my habits that will help with my self-development
- Family and friends all remaining healthy
- Adding to my Wardrobe for the first time in 3 years 😮
Despite the list above, none of these are in fact my highlight for January.
Nope! That honour goes to the sitcom The Office US
What are you talking about?
Bear with me a moment; back in December I read (courtesy of my regular Netflix newsletter — a newsletter that I rarely actually open) that The Office US (a show I had bookmarked years ago as a must-watch) was due to disappear from the platform by the end of December 2022 due to a rights dispute.
“Damn it,” I thought, “I’ve only had 10 years to watch that show and still haven’t got round to it”
Nothing like a bit of scarcity to sharpen the mind and so, having read this, I vowed to myself that I would somehow find a way to watch the entire show from start to finish by the end of December.
For those who are unaware, the show has 188 episodes which equates to over 65 hours of TV (it would be considerably longer if adverts were included). With 31 days in December that effectively meant I would have to watch about 2 hours of the show a day to achieve my goal.
Never one to be put off, I immediately identified a couple of hacks:
- I didn’t need to watch the credits or intro sequence on each episode which would save me about 6 hours of tv (2 mins per show x 188 episodes)
- Thanks to Netflix, I could watch episodes on 1.5 times speed, meaning 60 hours became 40 hours
- If I combined my viewing with other activities I could be more effective — so in this way watching the show became my treat to doing a session on the treadmill or exercise bike at the gym or something to enjoy whilst ironing
I must admit that despite this incredibly smart thinking (ok, I consider it smart), as I reached the end of December, I was still nowhere near finishing the show and I became a little distraught.
What was going on?
I’d given it a good go but what with Christmas and such, as the year was ending, I still had a good 60 episodes to watch.
I resigned myself to failure* and just assumed that I wouldn’t be able to watch another episode post December 31st and stopped my viewing.
Then, out of the blue, in early January I read that Netflix had reversed it’s decision and the show was back.
“Wahoo!” I thought, “I can do this.”
Even though I had recently got back into a busy period of work, and had less time to watch, I set myself the challenge to finish watching the show by the end of January.
Nothing like a challenge to get me motoring….
[If this was a movie, this would be the montage bit but let’s just leap ahead to the end]
And so it was, 2 days before the end of January, I finished episode 188, The Finale, and leapt up into the air. “Get in!”
What’s your conclusion?
Yep, it may seem that getting excited for finishing watching a tv show that was first released 18 years ago is totally vacuous in the grand scale of things but it is that, that I am most proud of so far in 2023.
Not only was the show excellent (mixing sharp with with touching drama) but sometimes you need a silly goal to drive you and bring you through what otherwise might be a slightly depressing time (it definitely inspired me to do more stuff ironically to earn the treat each day).
I took away the fact that sometimes you just need small, silly goals to get some momentum and make other things fun. That you shouldn’t give up on your goals just because of an artifical deadline. And that on this occasion the US remake may just be better than the original 😉.
So that’s it! I’d love to know what your highlight for January was as well as sourcing any recommendations on what next to watch….
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness.
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
*I would subsequently find out that the show could actually be watched on at least 2 other streaming sites that I had subscriptions to…but I didn’t know that at the time
Originally Published on https://farisaranki.medium.com/
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