2009 was a pretty good year for me. I wrote a book, launched a web site, organized a bunch of local events in Portland, had some fun speaking gigs, and worked with some great clients.
I have some plans for how I want to do things a little differently in 2010, and these fall into two primary categories. Firstly, I want to achieve a better balance between work and life and secondly, work on great projects that leave me inspired.
Achieving Balance Between Work and Life
- Take more beach vacations! I haven’t taken a real vacation that didn’t involve visiting family since I started my own business. In my defense, I did take two beach vacations the previous year, but it’s time for me to start planning another nice vacation.
- Stay healthy by eating real food (less junk) and working out to improve my physical strength and endurance.
- Spend more time reading for both work and pleasure, with a combination of fiction and business / technology books.
- Take another hard look at all of my side projects to get rid of any projects that I don’t really enjoy and don’t add value in some some way.
Work on Great Projects That Leave Me Inspired
- Continue to do interesting work on fun projects where I can collaborate with people who inspire me to be better. This means picking projects where I can work with really smart people.
- Keep up with my writing and blogging. I enjoy blogging, and writing blog posts forces me to think about things that I sometimes take for granted, and reminds me to share what I know in hopes that someone will learn something from my experience.
- Start a few more web sites, like I did with The Crazy Neighbor. It’s a great learning experience, a good way to practice my skills and fun to experiment with something new. These also give me something to work on that are my projects, instead of client projects.
- Most importantly, shift some of my work to doing tasks, rather than just advising. The downside to doing mostly strategic consulting is that I spend a lot of time advising other people and teaching them how to do things and I’m finding that while I love helping set strategy and providing advice, I miss actually doing the work.
What are your hopes and plans for 2010?