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suggested-reading

A Smattering of New Year Advice

By | self-improvement, suggested-reading, vision | No Comments

Happy New Year! It’s been a few days since my last post and the challenge of posting every day in December. I took a few days off because quite honestly it was harder than I thought it was going to be. On top of that, I took time to connect with my family and then had to catch up on all the work from the downtime.

But I’m back…and it’s a new year!

With a new year comes a lot of people telling us how you should reinvent yourself or “make it your year!”  There’s a lot of chatter out there on the old interwebs. Here’s some of the articles I enjoyed:

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Busy Entrepreneurs in 2017
This is good advice for everyone, not just entrepreneurs.

Take care of your physical health. Practice empathy. Take a vacation. Set firm time limits. Disconnect from work when away from the office.

These are valuable pieces of advice and will ultimately make you happier. Taking care of yourself first and making time for life outside of work are two big things that make for better employees. As I shared in the post on making solid teams, psychological safety and empathy are keys to being successful in the work place.

Why You Should be Planning for 2018, Not 2017
“Everything you do is positioning.” This mirrors what I wrote in my blog post Your Future Life. You want to set up for what’s next. This article does an excellent job of going deeper and focuses on your responsibility for the choices you make and how you react to events that happen in your life.  

10 Expert Tips To Make 2017 Your Most Productive Year Yet
They aren’t all home run suggestions but a few spoke to me.

Pick your most important thing and make a one item to do list every day. The book The One Thing was one of my favorite books of 2015 so in your day as well as in your products you should be focusing on one metric for success at a time.

Action triggers have helped me to get work done at times when I would normally be wasting time and or lounging about, like when I get the kids in bed I’m going to finish this blog post…yes this one that I’m writing right now.

And finally, and most importantly, say no to more things, what things are you not going to NOT do this year? Set hard fast rules about what you won’t do and it will add amazing clarity to what you will do.

And not a 2017 article, but it was sent to my email this week: 

Why You Need a Word for Your Year
I like this concept. I don’t agree with doing it before you set your annual goals, as I believe the word should be informed by your direction, but to each his/her own. I like the way that Mark Zuckerberg set every yearly challenge to a theme, 2016’s being invention. Treat the word as your theme for the year. My word for the year will be creation.


Tomorrow’s post will be a retrospective on December and the plan for January moving forward with a sneak peek at some of the topics I’m going to be writing about.  I’ve been working on the content calendar for the past few days and have a clear direction moving into the first six months of the year that I’m going to build upon. Stay tuned.

Got any articles from the first week of the year that you think I should read? Let me know in the comments.