It’s Not Too Late! What have you done with 2012?

By Rowan Gibson

Tom Peters once posed this question at a seminar back in the early 1990s. What have you actually done with one whole precious year of your life? And, more to the point, what exactly were you going to do with the next one?

With one year having ended, and we contemplate what lies ahead for us all in 2013, think about Tom’s question. Sit down and write an annual report – not for your company or department, but for your own career and personal life. Doubtless you were very busy throughout last year doing all kinds of… er, ‘stuff’. But can you list your most ‘stunning’ accomplishments 2012? Did you make a significant difference last year in your organization or, better yet, in your field? Did you start working on that book, or blog, or pet project, Did you do something – anything – that could one day be legendary? What will your children or your grandchildren boast to their friends about you?

Sometimes it takes an exercise like this to jolt us out of our complacency and get us to make those hefty adjustments to our careers and our lives that we know we should be making but somehow haven’t yet gotten around to. So, having done the self assessment looking back at 2012, the next challenge is to look ahead to this year, 2013. What are you going to do this year that could meet the test of being truly ‘Wow’?

What projects, goals, values, are you going to adopt a ‘fanatic’s posture’ toward? How exactly do you plan to make a dent in the universe?

The greatest piece of advice ever followed might be just one single word: “focus”. Make a list of all the things you will inevitably end up doing this year unless you intervene. Then make a list of what you would truly love to do, and where you would love to be. Throw the fi rst list away and start crossing things off the second one until you get down to just one big career- changing or life-changing goal. Then resolve to focus all your energy in 2013 on that one big thing and treat all else as secondary. Pursue your goal tenaciously as if it’s the only thing worth doing for the rest of your life. View it as a grand adventure, or as someone put it, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

If you’re gutsy enough to follow your dream this year, and to work like hell to make it happen, congratulations. May 2013 bring you and your family wealth, health and happiness.

See this and other newsletter articles at http://amt-mep.org/files/5313/5714/3700/2013-01.pdf

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