Rather than letting all the cares of the world intrude, this is a good time to set out your priorities for the year ahead and resolve to stick to them

As the new year gets underway, it can be hard to distinguish your true priorities for 2008 from all those distracting concerns over which you have no control. This year, more than any other since I set up in business in the mid-1980s, the economic storm clouds are so threatening that I have found myself pondering the potential for business meltdown, with the words of Dad's Army's Private Frazer ringing in my head: "We're all doomed!"

Financial markets are shuddering from the Northern Rock sub-prime-induced lending shock that carries with it the real expectation of trillion-dollar-plus banking debt exposure, and a negative impact on corporate liquidity. Property looks like the single most overvalued global asset class and could fall like a pile of bricks if consumer confidence were to dissolve.

The dollar is so weak that oil sheiks are complaining that $100+ barrel prices represent unfair exploitation of the producers; and governments are themselves potentially destabilising free market flows through unprecedented investments in politically sensitive strategic assets in other countries.

Significant price hikes for gas, food, and other raw materials paint an unsettling prospect for inflation, and the gung-ho American consumer surely can't carry on borrowing to bail us all out forever.

We still face the prospect of a nuclear Iran, continuing conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and violent terrorism at home. Our public services are under pressure from unprecedented levels of immigration and even our previously sacrosanct private financial data is no longer secure.

The good news is that none of this really matters because the prospect of a global pandemic, where something like avian flu wipes out hundreds of millions of us and shuts down the world economy in an afternoon, is more likely now than at any other time since we were born.

All these noises are broadcast loudly and in many forms. When you are responsible for a business, there are always plenty of pressing issues to worry about, and the challenge is to choose the right focus and work in the right order on the stuff you can actually change. Could that energy you wasted ranting about the injustices of red tape or the postal strike have been spent more wisely on the phone to your customers?

Top of my new year's work resolution list is "heal thyself". As directors, we cannot expect to keep firing on all cylinders if we don't invest enough thought and time into our personal health and fitness.

More time spent walking the dog, working in the back garden and putting the new mountain bikes from Santa to mean and muddy use with my nine-year-old should do the trick.

Second is the use of the word "no", which appears far too rarely in communications from me but is already featuring in large print on Post-it notes attached to my fridge, dashboard and PC. I have a potent need to be liked. Why else would I offer myself up for so much when there is no answer to my wife's stock question of: "Why on earth would you do that?"

Third, I'm going to do more of the "management by walking about" that everyone raves about, which will help me understand my team on the ground and show them that I really do care and exist—as opposed to my more usual method of mismanagement by email.

My fourth priority for 2008 is to make better use of the data at my fingertips. We put huge effort into gathering this data, but do very little with it. We know everything, from how many calls an advert in the FT will generate on a Monday morning, to the breakdown by postcode of the 100,000 people on our customer list. So why is it we're always on holiday when the phones get busy, and can't find a reliable means of getting our products safely to our customers?

Finally, my mantra for the year is "less is more", starting with less on my desk and more focus on the job in hand. All that distracting noise should soon fade into the background.

Alex Pratt OBE is founder of seriousreaders.com and an adviser to the government on innovation and skills.