Nicola Patrick: 2020, time to focus on work, sleep, family, friends and fitness

An e-bike is a step to reduce a personal carbon footprint. Photo / File

THE GLASS HALF-FULL

The year 2020 is here – a year of vision and clarity? An opportunity to put excessive pressure on yourself to have it together all the time? Or a year to get real about how many hours there are in a day and be more conscious of priorities?

An important first step, for me at least, is realising that 20/20 vision doesn't actually mean perfect vision – it's just an eye-test measurement and not a big symbol that this is THE year.

That said, January is a great time to take stock. While I wouldn't exactly call them resolutions, I have set myself some areas of focus for the year ahead.

As someone who's now quasi-self-employed, I struggle with motivation sometimes. My working life to date has always been busy – lots of deadlines and I respond well to deadlines. But now, I'm setting myself priorities and it's been all too easy to embrace a decent summer holiday.

So I'm reducing my social media use – it's a fantastic time-waster, which is all well and good while on holiday, but now I'm back into work, I'm setting limits.

I'm also increasing incidental exercise thanks to my new (well, second-hand) e-bike. It's early days but I've already clocked up 60-odd km in rides into town over the past week.

I'm really enjoying leaving the car at home – each trip only takes a few minutes longer and in this glorious weather, it's lovely to be outside. And while I normally drive a hybrid car, the e-bike is an additional step for me to reduce my personal carbon footprint.

I've been pleased to see the NZ Institute of Directors putting climate action at the top of their list of five priorities for boards in 2020. They say it's all about the long-term sustainability of organisations and I agree. We've also had the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, which manages US$7 trillion, announce that climate change is now at the centre of its investment strategy.

Second on the Institute of Directors' list was governing for purpose and they quoted the British Academy from its 2019 report into the need to reform "the corporation".

The academy has produced eight principles for "purposeful business", which are designed to help business profitably solve the problems of people and planet, and to prevent business from profiting from harm. This is exactly what my trust, Thrive Whanganui, is all about.

At a personal level, it's an election year and I'm backing the Greens to get more hardworking MPs into the next Government. Unfortunately, we'll also be bombarded with the US election happening this year and it has the potential to distract and confuse, particularly if (or when) cynical political tactics are used.

To keep fresh and hopeful, I plan to work alongside local young activists campaigning for climate action to help achieve widespread support across all (okay, most) political stripes.

Leadership on climate shouldn't be the sole preserve of the Green Party – we need others to get serious about knuckling down on the systems change necessary.

This means accelerating away from the residual coal use left in NZ, increasing incentives for renewable energy, making public transport more accessible – including between regions, creating cycle-friendly cities, changing the Building Code so energy efficiency in new builds is not capped, and continuing to grow initiatives to reduce waste and therefore methane from landfills (and more!).

Leadership on climate shouldn't be the sole preserve of the Green Party - we need others to get serious about knuckling down on the systems change necessary.

There's only so much we can do as individuals – as the British Academy says, we need "an ecosystem of pathways to change", including legal reform, new partnerships and refreshed skills.

Finally I'm thinking about the 2018 bestseller by Randi Zuckerberg Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day). In her book, she sets out five broad categories of what's important – work, sleep, family, friends and fitness – and makes it clear that you can only do three well each day. I'm going to see if this conscious imbalance will help me make progress in 2020. Please get in touch if you wish to join me – nicola@nicolapatrick.com.

•Nicola Patrick is a councillor at Horizons Regional Council, leads Thrive Whanganui, a social enterprise hub, is a Green Party member and has a science degree. A mum of two boys, this fortnightly column is her personal opinion.