Three Themes For 2010

I’ve decided to ditch the idea of new years resolutions this year and focus instead on three key themes. Here they are:

Limiting Myself To The Essential

I read Leo Babauta’s book The Power of Less late last year and it had a surprisingly profound affect on me. I didn’t have any major “ah-ha!” moments while getting through the book. It’s all pretty intuitive stuff. What did happen was that in the weeks after I read the book I started noticing some of my…let’s say, “sub optimal” habits repeat themselves while I was doing the hum-drum, day-to-day stuff that I normally don’t think much about – little things like checking my email first thing in the morning or before I sit down to work. I realized that the little stuff can have a big impact on my work flow and that I spend more time than I should on some activities that break my momentum, distract me when I’m focusing, drain my energy and don’t help move my important projects forward. In 2010 I want to work on blocking out clutter and distractions, and focusing on just the activities and habits that help me achieve my goals, improve my relationships and keep me on track. Optimization is what 2010 is going to be about. Wish me luck with this one. ;-)

Deep practice

There are a number of things I’ve always wanted to be really good at that I’m “just OK” at right now because I haven’t made achieving expertise in those areas a priority (yet). There are a few core skills that I want to actively develop in 2010. In a few cases it may take over 10,000 hours of effort to get me to the level of proficiency that I’ve always wanted, which is why I never really committed myself in the first place. I’m shifting my approach and putting some long term learning goals on the high priority list. The marathon towards expertise starts now.

Shipping

I’ve always had an insatiable desire to learn. The problem is that my free time is limited these days, and my curiosity isn’t, so I spend more time than I should Googling, reading blogs, taking on new projects that get half done, or buying books that don’t get finished. Doing 80% of 10 things isn’t progress. It just means that nothing got 100% done. Time to put more time into fewer projects and focus on the essential activities that help me wrap up projects and ship content. And there you go…we’ve gone full circle.

What are your themes for 2010?