I don’t do resolutions, but I have changed how I approach something at work for this year, and so I guess that counts, right?

I now have regular blocks of time in my calendar marked out as “Busy. Any meetings added in this time will be declined.”. This was after I realised I had multiple days in a week where in 7 hours I was doing a dozen or more meetings and was feeling totally burnt out at the end of each of those.

I got back in touch with the people who had called those meetings (including myself, clearly my own worst enemy) and asked if my contribution had been valuable, and they said it had. There are very few meetings where I am a quiet observer so I’ll take their word for it, and I already reject meetings I don’t think I can be useful in or I suggest alternative people to attend, but the feedback means that if I’m usefully being glue then I need to take more aggressive direct action to protect my time and this is my first try at that.