In between worrying about the snow, I’ve been pondering how to make my life easier in 2010.

First things first: (a belated) happy new year to you all. Thanks for all your Christmas messages, they were much appreciated - and yes, thanks for asking, Christmas was great. I had a whole week off. What a slacker.

I wasn't going to talk about the snow this week (I'm still feeling a bit embarrassed about my schoolgirl gushing on the subject last year). But it's definitely been the big preoccupation so far in 2010. Just when you really need people to be switched on and focused on the task ahead, along comes the snow and suddenly everyone develops the attention span of a goldfish. I was desperate to start the year with a bang, but it's actually been more of a whimper. Even I, the world's biggest snow fan, am starting to dread its arrival (I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t keep thawing and coming back again – just make your mind up, will you?).

Also, the rubbishness of our general response to snow seems to have become a lot more irritating this year. It's as if everyone just gives up as soon as they see open the curtains and see some white stuff outside: trains and buses stop functioning, and people suddenly become incapable of doing anything useful. It makes you wonder how places where it snows all the time manage to have any functional businesses whatsoever.

Anyway, enough of that. My plan was actually to talk about my New Years' Resolutions. Now I should probably point out that I'm not really very good at resolutions. Or at least, I'm not very good at sticking to them. Every year I sit down and think 'I really must try and improve my work/ life balance', and every year it gets to March and I realise that I've worked 75% of the weekends and can barely remember what some of my friends' names are (fortunately they're kind of used to this by now - years of practice).

Since I'm so useless at sticking to personal resolutions, I figured it was best to concentrate on work ones this time round. And although I came at it from a few different directions, it basically boiled down to one thing: to spend more time working on the business, rather than in the business. In the second half of last year I spent so much time fire-fighting that I didn't do enough thinking about the future. I don’t regret that; in the circumstances I had no choice. But it's no way for a good entrepreneur to operate, because it means you miss opportunities.

One potential way of addressing this, I’ve decided, is to appoint another senior person to spread the load - a COO type who can oversee all the boring-but-important stuff like legal, IT and finance. I’ve been a bit reluctant to do this, in the past. I don’t mind shelling out for salespeople – if they’re good they make more money for you than they make for themselves, and if they’re not it’s easy to get rid of them. But with a COO, you don’t get the same direct return – good ones cost money, which comes straight off the bottom line, and their contribution is a bit harder to measure.

On the other hand, there’s a chance it might free up 30-40% of my time (since I manage most of this stuff at the moment). And if I can’t make enough extra cash for the business in that time to offset the cost of his/ her salary, then I need to give up right now. It’ll also make my job a lot more fun, I think – and my other resolution is for this year to be a lot more fun than the last one. Hope yours is too.