Deciding your priorities to get the most from 2023

Hopefully, you’ve got some time coming up where you can reflect on 2022 and begin your plan for getting the most from 2023. If not, might I suggest that you book out a chunk of time in your diary now, whilst you’ve got the chance. You know, protect that time, before the quieter time of your year comes to an end, usually at or around the end of January.

Just to be clear here, we’re not necessarily talking about goal setting here. Life, no matter how long it goes for, is short. “I wish I met those Q3 numbers”, said no-one ever at the end of their life. So rather than goals, I’d encourage you to think about your priorities.

Decide what’s important to you in 2023.

Planning your priorities for 2023 can be around your business, your career, your family, your life in general; whatever will make for a more meaningful new year.

Priorities for starting a new business – an example

One of your top priorities for 2023 might be getting a new business up and running. In which case, you’ll likely want to start with a list of all the things you’ve got to do before you’ve got a real business. They might include things like;

• Registering your business name
• Deciding on what kind of business entity you’re going to trade as
• Finding an accountant
• Registering your business’ URL
• Deciding on what your business will sell, to whom and for how much
• Sorting out where you’ll work from (a storefront, an office, warehouse or your home/garage)
• Setting up your social media profiles
• How you’re going to get your first customer/client (rinse and repeat)

And a whole host of other busy ‘doing’ things before you go live.

But before you get to all of that, think about where the business fits within your life priorities. You might want to consider the following;

• How much do you want to work? Is this a lifestyle business where you only want to work 10-20-30 hours a week? How will you protect the rest of your hours from work seeping into them? It’s ridiculously easy to say they won’t, but work can have a habit of filling space that’s available if you’re not planned in your approach.
• Is your new business a side gig? Take some time to think through how this will fit with your existing life, job and/or business and how you’ll manage if it takes off quickly.
• Will your new business be the lifeblood you and/or your family depend on? In which case, how much time are you committing to spend on it? Someone once told me that being a business owner, came with lots of freedom, in particular I could choose whichever 18 hours of the day I wanted to work. We laughed, but there have been times when they weren’t wrong and it would have been easy to allow the business to takeover much of the rest of my life as I’ve seen happen with others. I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying that you need to be clear on where your business fits within your life’s priorities from the outset and plan around that. And if you can, start as you mean to go on.

Other life priorities

Maybe 2023 is the year you start a family, get fit, buy a home or start/go back to uni. In which case you’ll want to be clear on what that looks like, how much time/energy you’re prepared to commit to that and how that will fit into your life as it stands at the moment. Chances are you’ll need to come up with a plan to ensure you’ve got enough time and resources available in order to make it happen.

If you don’t plan how to integrate your priorities into your life, chances are, your 2023 priorities, will go the way of 2023 resolutions, which likely isn’t far at all.

Streamlining your 2023 priorities

Now that you’ve thinking about what’s important to you, your next step will be to create a list. You will probably want to keep it simple and have one key and only a couple as secondary priorities.

If you’ve got a list of 10 priorities, that’s okay as a starting position. However working with 10 priorities at any one time means your attention is likely going to be very fractured. You’ll want to trim it down.

Try running through the list and seeing if there’s one priority that jumps out as the thing that will unlock others or have some of the others cascade from it as a result. A friend of mine who’s rebuilding her business after a life-changing accident, might want to have the business as her key priority, but she also knows that without putting her health front and centre, she simply won’t have the energy to sustain the business rebuild. Hence her real priority is rebuilding her fitness – at least for the next x long.

Once you’ve decided on your priorities, you also want to decide what’s in your life that doesn’t align with what you’re focusing on next.

Maybe you’ve decided you’re going to focus on your career and that side gig you started during the pandemic, just doesn’t cut the mustard any longer. So you can either trim it back to the bare bones, put it on hold or you can up stumps and be done. There’s no rule that says you can’t change your mind when your priorities change. But if you are ‘decommissioning’ a business or even putting it on hold, just make sure you do it the right way and get some professional advice on how best to go about that. You don’t want to fall foul of the ATO, ASIC or any other government agency.

And one last thing…

If you get part way through the year, and find your priorities changing (or your attention straying) for whatever reason, look back over your existing priorities list and repeat the process. That way you’ll always know where your current focus should be.

***

The Mason Lloyd team and I wish you and yours (be it team and/or family) all the very best for a prosperous and easier 2023.

Of course, if we can help you better manage your business planning, business wind up or your business/personal tax affairs, you can call us on 6023 1700 or connect with us via Facebook or LinkedIn.

​