A response to Anthony Iannarino.
ROUTINE
After reviewing my own ridiculous list of resolutions this year, I immediately became overwhelmed. Then I remembered what my client Kevin Archbold (Key Consulting) consistently preaches during our weekly calls – never neglect your schedule or your critical path. So I roughly mapped out the critical path for my resolutions – the verdict: EVERY resolution hinged on my ability to dominate my routine. If I do not steadily hack and optimize my routine, I will certainly fail. And the anchor of my routine is a weekly review of my schedule.
HUMAN
Seth & I wrote 29 articles in 2013 on injecting humanity back into our marketing (and our lives). And 3 out of 5 of our company resolutions revolved around this goal, from meeting our clients and vendors in-person worldwide, to launching a real bootcamp for small business owners. Who would really want to tweet someone in their ecosystem, if they had the chance to jam with them in-person? NOBODY works with us because our logo is cool, or posts are witty … they hire us because we show up and work our asses off.
STRONG
The nexus of my motivations for this year is a hunger for strength. Strong enough to walk away from a malformed deal. Strong enough to accept Seth’s rare (but damn near spot-on) criticisms of my work. Strong enough to press forward when I’m scared shitless. Strong enough to tell a client no, my daughter’s karate class will ALWAYS be more important than your project, and no I’m not sorry for saying that. Strong enough to ignore shortcuts. Strong enough to declare: enough mediocrity, this is gonna be hard, and will probably hurt, but I’m going to do it anyways because I must.
Make your own list here.
Excellent choices, Nate. I resonate with all of them.
Last year I chose Lean, which is very much your choice here of Routine. To do more, you need to eliminate wasted motions, follow a process or methodology, create the workflow that works.
Sowing up and working your ass off is never a bad idea. Neither is learning to say “no” to smaller things to make room for what is really important (that one shows up as “margin” on my three words).
Anthony