So here we are again on the cusp of the new year.  One slippery six week slope to 2014.  Another spin around the sun officially starting on January 1.

We will soon read all sorts of advice about how to set our New Year Resolutions, how to avoid letting yet another gym membership go to waste—and for some of us—how to avoid getting crazy during the holiday season.  That sort of thing.  Given all that we have read so far this year, haven’t we already had enough?

We in the management psychology field are no different.  We pile on extra helpings of advice just like everyone else.

From the consultants, to the newspaper columnists, everyone has good intentions to make your job and life easier and more successful.  But, maybe we should all just say, “enough.”  Aren’t our mental plates already full?

What I notice principally about all the year-end advice is how little of it is new.  It’s like idea leftovers from last year reconstituted with some fresh spin to wash it down.  I wonder why that is.

One hypothesis is that we writers are not aware of the repetition.  We simply fall into the same patterns of habituated thought that our columns throughout the year try to help us break free of.  I’m sure this is true a lot of the time.  I know it is for me. 

Another hypothesis is that on some level we realize we haven’t learned the lessons yet.  One of my spiritual teachers told me years ago, “If you don’t get it this time, don’t worry.  You’ll get another chance.”

So here I am, blessed with your attention and faced with the annual temptation to reconstitute some old advice about how to survive, or handle, or manage to enjoy, or stay centered (or sane) during the fiscal and calendar year end that many of us (me included) haven’t really integrated yet anyway.

But, here I will try to avoid that temptation to scoop another spoonful of advice on your already full plate.  You have read it all before.

I have learned that when I learn to say when, I realize that I already have enough.  And I believe you do, too.  We all do.  You don’t need to read them again.  You already “know” all that you will read from here until the end of the year.  All that’s left is the decision on what do to with it.

Happy Year End.

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.