By Jim Fedele, CBET
Hello readers of TechNation! This is my first column in this great magazine. The new year brings a fresh start to reset ourselves with new goals and resolutions. It gives us that personal “reset” to get back on track with great resolve. For me, the new year is ushering in many changes in my personal and professional life. One important change for me professionally is that after 17 years of writing in Medical Dealer magazine, we are moving my column to TechNation. It is an honor to share editorial space with great industry leaders like Manny Roman, Roger Bowles and the other contributors to this magazine. My hope is that I can bring value to this magazine by sharing experiences and insights from daily experiences as a biomedical director.
I find comfort in what a new year symbolizes. It provides me with the necessary closure to a year worth of experiences – good and bad. It provides a natural catalyst to goal setting and career planning that you just don’t get any other time of the year. I would even bet people who say they can’t set goals have set goals or promises to themselves on New Year’s Day. I doubt anyone would be motivated to start a new project or set a new goal on July 1, there is just too much going on. Who can think about all that planning stuff when there are picnics and barbecues to go to? Not me.
The new year is the clean slate I need to get motivated. I find it refreshing to mentally cleanse my spirit of all the worries, failures and fear from last year. Then resolve to take corrective action and to not repeat the experiences over again. I find many people get tripped up planning for the future because of some past negative experience or some unfounded fear. The new year can be a symbol of life anew and the inspiration to help you move forward with a clean conscience. There is absolutely no better time to get busy on projects, especially for procrastinators like me that use interruptions to delay unpleasant work. The opportunity to focus on what needs done is never better than the beginning of the year.
Setting yourself up for success this year is simple if you follow a few guidelines. First, be specific about what you want to accomplish. Beware of generalities. Ensure your goal is measurable, you can’t improve what you cannot measure. Ask yourself if you possess the talent to accomplish what you want or will you need help. Confide in a mentor or friend; tell them what you want to do.
Write down the goal and put it some place you can read it every day, and track your progress. Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself if at first you fall off track or your progress is slow, just assess what you are doing and change your strategy, if necessary. It has been my experience that by following these steps for setting goals my success rate to stay on track increases dramatically.
Don’t let this opportunity to start fresh with a clean slate pass you by. Challenge yourself to be more than you are. Take a course, attend a conference, develop a new skill or just try to improve your health. I think that once you start you will be glad that you spent time on your own improvement.
In closing, I would like to thank my readers in Medical Dealer for the past years of support and engagement. I am hopeful the great people who read TechNation will be the same.
Happy New Year!
Jim Fedele, CBET, is the director of clinical engineering for Susquehanna Health Systems in Williamsport, Pa. He can be reached for questions and/or comments via email at info@mdpublishing.com.