2020 Broke, Can We Get a New One?

2020 needs a reboot! Read on for tips on how to reframe the year from hell into a strategy to launch your career into success in 2021.

2020 – the one we all want to forget. It’s the year where we want to phone the universe’s IT department and ask if they can please push restart and download the new update, cos this ain’t working.

It’s a year of meme gold and one for the history books.

It’s been a year of heart warming collective connections and soul crushing defeats on a personal and global scale.

The highs were hard fought and the lows had you banning sweat pants on a weekend as they were reclassified as office wear.

The end of the year is fast approaching

Typically at this time of year we begin to reflect on the year we’ve had, what went well and not so well.  Plans start to form for the year ahead. What’s different about this year is that everyone is looking forward to seeing the back of it, like 2020 was some awkward uninvited guest.

Well this guest doesn’t have a curfew, it won’t just leave because we want it to. There seems to be a collective wish that if we just push through, when we wake up on the morning of the 1st of January 2021 everything will be different somehow.

2020 is not dirt on your shoulder

You can’t just brush it off. 

If we see 2020 as some embarrassing ex that we want to forget about, then we risk falling again. Because the truth is that this new place we find ourselves in is here to stay and by that I don’t mean the cliche of “this is the new normal”, but living with relative unpredictably and having things we took for granted (like being able to travel) still being out of our reach.

Opportunity knocks

2020 offers us a chance for growth. When people say “can we get rid of 2020 already! Am I right?” I actually struggle to join in with the 2020 beat up. It had definite lows, but 2020 offered a chance to work differently, innovate products and undertake self reflection and learn new resilience skills. There was no rhythm, predictive analysis or scenario planning that could prepare  anyone for this.

I noticed the people pushing through where the ones that were asking “what can I learn?” and “what is this bringing forward?”. As a team we found ourselves discussing how we can work with more heart and how can we stay connected.

COVID Linings

Resilience used to be about dealing with change. Traditional courses had an underlying agenda that if you prepared enough then you could handle anything, well how do you prepare for an international pandemic?  Resilience is now about vulnerability. Vulnerability is the only thing we have left when everything else goes out the window. It doesn’t mean you become weaker by opening yourself up to be picked apart (a fear response) but rather it’s the fuel for innovation.

A rebel mindset is important, one where we throw out the rules we’ve built for ourselves because heck – COVID has thrown our sense of security out the window so why stick to office platitudes and tired ways of doing things?

Try these tips to take the best lessons from your 2020 into the future:

• Try something new and see how it goes. If an inner critic raises it’s head, banish it
• Explain what motivates and drives you, shift your perspective from focusing on the details and the what and began to ask why and how
• Don’t be afraid to pick a passion project and call it that, share it widely and recruit people to your cause
• Open up to your colleagues about your struggles or blockages in your work and you’ll be surprised how many can relate
• Stop thinking about all the things you can’t control or the things you can’t do and start thinking: if there are no rules and the shackles are off, what can you challenge, change or make?

2021 is going to be much like 2020 but hopefully we’re all a little bit more prepared. Rather than leaving 2020 in the dust, what can you thank it for?