Make some resolutions  -  and then sort them!

-
While it has always been unfashionable to do so, I like New Years Resolutions — well I like the idea anyway. I’d like them more if I was less unsuccessful actually following through on mine. :-)
The naysayers will complain about the how its an arbitrary date. Why the heck can’t you make those resolutions any day of the year?
You can obviously; but I think there’s something about ritual,s however arbitrary they may seem, that’s powerful. The reality is that we seldom think about taking a minute to resolve what we want to do next, even though we always can. Add in the fact that we know many people around us are doing the same thing makes us more likely to actually follow through on them as well.
Anyway, this year I tried some thing a little different.


I made a list — specifically I made two lists.
The first of things that I was happy about in 2013 and the second of things I wished had gone better last year.
Given my nature, the second list was longer than the first but it still made me realize what a great year 2013 had been for me and my family— both personally and professionally. The second list also made it pretty clear what needed to be on my resolutions list for 2014.
Then I sorted both lists — putting the things that mattered most first and comparing stack ranking both the things I was happy with and wished had gone better.
This actually took longer than writing out the list!
It was also even more useful. It made me realize in a very deliberate way that in most cases my effort-to-how-much-time-I-put-in-or-care-ratio was completely off.
I should be a lot happier on a day-to-day basis that things I care more about are actually going well, and similarly should focus a lot more on the things I wanted most to be much better.
One of the things I do for a living — ranking projects, prioritizing actions and making decisions — that I think I’m actually pretty good at in the context of products — was something I wasn’t doing as rigorously for my own life and certainly not making every decision based on.
The Big Rocks story applies especially to your life.
So if you’re making resolutions — good for you! But to make the most out of them make sure you sort em!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Rescue Me" minisodes

-
I'm a fan of the FX show " Rescue Me " I was lukewarm when Dennis Leary mentioned the mini-sodes on his Daily Show visit. But, for the Rescue Me's particular situation it works really well. First the mini-sodes are actually good! they use characters from the story and tell a little anecdote they were clearly pretty cheap to produce through what seems like a little bit of complicated mess, they're distributing like crazy: YouTube , Crackle (Sony's site), the FX site (powered by Brightcove), Hulu These do exactly what they're supposed to do new episodes aren't coming till Spring 2009 , the fans need something to tide them over and keep the show in their memory: done potentially rope in new fans (short episodes, lower commitment to start watching the show) without freaking out old school media which is loathe to risk potential DVD sales by putting older episodes/clips online: done Its not completely clear to me how much this is by their own design, and
Read more

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Avengers Endgame: how trivial passions can nudge a career

-
Image
The Internets reminded me that today was exactly 2 years since Avenger's Endgame was released. I remember that day vividly for a few reasons I woke up before sunrise (way before the alarm went off).   I wore this (now that I think about it) borderline appropriate T-shir t and then..  .. showed up before 7:00am to watch that movie at Century Shoreline before going to work.  This is still the only movie that has a scene that can make me tear up consistently every single time (I know, I know - it's ridiculous).  That day was interesting from a work perspective for another reason. Along with a few other people at work (and with some crazy last-minute negotiating), we'd pulled together the Thanos Easter Egg on Search. It was typical of a lot of Easter Eggs on Search at the time, in that it wasn't really anybody's job, but we pushed it through because we loved the idea enough to do it. My day job on Media experience on Search helped me justify it a little bit I guess.
Read more