12 Things to Do (Besides Break Your New Year's Resolutions) in 2009

Stop That! (A Response to Chris Brogan's "12 Things to Stop Doing in 2009")

There's only ONE thing to stop doing in 2009:

Stop expressing your goals and aspirations in negative terms.

Learn to phrase your goals and aspirations in positive terms. Focus on the result you want, rather than the one you don't want. Here are a few things to START doing in 2009:

1. Write about something other than Twitter. This is the social media rockstar's equivalent of a writer writing about writing. Yes, there is a never-ending market for it, apparently - but you owe it to yourself and your readers to stretch and keep your mind nimble. (See also) That said, if your blog is wildly popular and focused on a niche, don't stretch so much you look like Gumby and surprise your readers with a complete change of topic; apparently, that upsets people.
2. Explain, for those of us lacking the "any-interest-whatsoever-in-sports" gene just what an "inside baseball" post is. Use standard English words; eschew jargon. Make "Buzzword Bingo" obsolete.
3. Up yours, too! (Sorry, that was a flippant response to Chris Brogan's "Stop putting yourself down.") Seriously? Take a moment each day to record and reflect on your accomplishments. Build yourself up - but stay humble and remember to build others up along the way.
4. Invent a panacea to prove Chris Brogan wrong. Patent it.
5. Learn to read minds. Or accept that empathy and compassion are reasonable substitutes for mind-reading, and develop them more fully.
6. Ask for help, sometimes. It makes others feel useful. The only thing standing between some folks and the abyss is a sense of purpose. You could save a life!
7. Try new things in old places. Try old things in new places, if they are old enough to be marketed as "vintage" or obscure enough that everyone has forgotten they're old, and thinks they're new.
8. Strive for excellence (not perfection) in all you do. Your career will move ahead of its own accord.
9. Remember that your mother doesn't work here. Take ownership of the problem (yes, even if you didn't cause it) and fix it. (See #6)
10. If something has been said 50,000 times before, and you have nothing novel to add to the conversation, pick the best expression of the idea and share it. Then shut up. Oh, the irony inherent in this post...
11. Strive to be less creative and more original.
12. Git 'er done. (Sorry. It just...like a brain fart.)

Chris Brogan says, "it’s hard to actually remember 12 things, let’s just do 6 things in the to do list." I like Chris's list. I spent some time, this morning, reviewing my own list and revising it for 2009. I'd accomplished even more than I remembered! It didn't take constant focus, but it did help to write it down.

I've managed to pare down my 43Things to 20-something things, but it's a fluid, ever-changing list. Tomorrow, it could have ten things, or thirty. I don't care if the site's called 43Things, I can only juggle so many plates at one time. I've added them to the sidebar on my blog, though, to keep them visible. Feel free to join me if any of them appeal to you as things to focus on in 2009.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Write about something other than blogging or writing, too. They say "write what you know," and if that's all you know, you need to get out more. Or as they used to say in the 1980s, "Get a life!"