Josh Mullins - The Journal Record
Jan 13, 2026
As we begin this new year, many people are going through the tradition of making new year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, new year’s resolutions tend to fall by the wayside when things get busy.
As we begin this new year, many people are going through the tradition of making new year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, new year’s resolutions tend to fall by the wayside when things get busy. Have you ever thought about why that is? One of those reasons is due to a lack of clarity on why we think something is important and how we accomplish that goal.
Clarity is defined as “the quality of being coherent and intelligible,” or “the quality of transparency or purity.” Clarity isn’t defined as having a new year’s resolution or creating a to-do list for the day of things you must get done.
Both these things leave much to be questioned, and it’s easy to fall away when we start asking hard questions regarding how to be successful. When you apply this to your business and you have partners and employees who are there to work with you to accomplish these things, without clarity a lot of that work can become disorganized, or worse, unnecessary and frustrating.
Whether in business or personally, as you work towards your goals, think about how a lack of clarity manifests itself in your time, your processes, and yours and others efforts. Does that look like a lot of busyness without a lot of value? Does it create frustration when trying to work together because people aren’t on the same page about how to get to the goal or even what the goal really is?
Think about what clarity is for you or your business based on our earlier definition. Clarity should provide transparency for those involved, should be understandable, and should provide some guidance on how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Clarity should also provide realistic expectations.
As a CPA in public accounting, one of the things we see frequently and can relate to personally, is people who think they can do it all right now. Through my own personal experience, once you have some clarity on your goals you can see that there are only so many things a person or group of people can successfully accomplish in a given period of time.
Clarity helps us see the direction we need to take, it helps us plan a realistic timeline for the next step, so that you can see what steps need to be taken, which step should come next, and when each of those steps should occur along the way. Clarity helps us know who should be involved, when they should be involved, and gives them guidance on how they can be successful. Clarity also gives us guidance on if we should involve outside experts into our process. You might be excellent at coming up with the big picture idea; however, we don’t always have to be the experts at everything it will take to turn those ideas into reality.
Clarity, consider how having it would make all those new year’s resolutions successful.