In lieu of a rah-rah speech about the wins of 2024 and the promise that 2025 hold for us, today’s Muse is focused on the skill of decision-making. Why? Decision-making is one of the most important skills that you can build for personal and professional career success. It is a higher order skill that relies on myriad subskills such as courage, creativity, communication, analysis, problem solving, compassion, self-awareness, situational awareness, financial literacy, business acumen, constructive conflict, teamwork, and the list goes on…

We know that humans are resistant to change. We’re hard wired that way. We also know that change is all around us. If we keep doing the same thing through time, it’s only logical that someone else has figured out a better way to do whatever thing it is we’re doing, and our calcified, habitual way of working is now out of date. What was efficient is now inefficient. This is entropy—with enough time, everything falls apart. What was once good for us is now bad because there is a new best-practice that has overtaken ‘the way things have always been done.’

So yes, habits can be powerful and beneficial. They can also become an anchor to progress and detrimental to career growth. Habits can become the fast pass to a fixed mindset.

Most importantly, ask yourself if your reaction to a new acquaintance is based on the response that our hyper-polarized society expects you to have, or are you willing to learn and grow your thinking and your network beyond the confines of a fixed mindset to an issue, people, or culture.

What we know about resolutions, is that most of them fail. Why do they fail? Because they’re typically not integrated into a broader long-term personal plan. Loads of energy and attention get poured into resolutions early in the year. Then time passes, entropy sets in, the inertia of the previous status quo sets in, and the hopes and dreams of New Year’s Eve are eventually dashed—leading to disappointment and regret.