uber.la

Beginning my evolution from 2009 to 2010.

In 2009 I dove into producing Uber.la full-time. My confidence coming out of Dell's global online team, was that I would easily land somewhere before my severance ran out. Of course, things don't always go to plan. And to share only a bit of the struggle, I am so glad I did not spend any severance on a new computer (17" Macbook Pro – Deceptive, Confusing or Am I Just a Dork? – Buying a 17" Macbook Pro) or a cash-for-clunkers trade. We went into conserve mode in May/June as the economy continued to chill.

As part of my blogging/journaling/writing I began exploring the value of putting my top-line goals up front and center on my blog. In two posts I attempted to define and refine my goals for 2009. Starting with this post  Communicate unceasingly – Your passion, vision and strategy* and revised upward with this post  Accountability and Action in the BIG GOALS of 2009, and Puttin Up the BIG GOALS of 2009 – Mid-Year Update in Progress In all of these I laid out some fairly abstract "do better" goals as well as some more practical goals. I attempted to refine and refocus each time and return to my commitment.

Here is my initial goal list I wrote on Jan. 26, a few days before I retired from Dell.

Here are my objectives for 2009:

1. Simplify my mental tag cloud
2. Control, filter and capture the important bits of my personal infostream
3. Share my personal growth and journey with new ideas, processes and technologies
4. Gain Velocity and Agility
5. Let go of the stress and overwhelm associated with information overload
6. Examine spiritual simplification as part of this overall life way (cause the Social Mesh holds the future in many ways)
7. Open my processes to the communities I haunt and ask for other virtual pilgrims to join the call for agility
8. Do better

Now rounding the corner on the closing of 2009, I am re-reading my priorities posts and looking at the changing landscape of my personal and professional life. And it is time to renew a few of the goals and recommit to improving all aspects of my life in 2010. And even more importantly, to improve the lives of others through influence, action, honesty, and passionate expression of joy, inspiration and connection.

So here are my uber-goals for 2010. Many are the same, but I think the focus is refined, in my mind, and the list has been simplified.

1. Simplify my tag cloud. (To the right you will see my newly streamlined category list on uber.la, which serves as a taxonomy for my writing. Everything must fall into some category, and after a year this is the structure that has presented itself. While the "about me" is pretty high with 142 posts containing some biographical information, the clear focus of my writing has been in Social Media and Technology Opinions.

2. Be infinitely more patient. (I think I say it pretty good here: Losing Patience & Trying to Find it Again : Repeat)

3. Strike hot ideas with the goal in mind. (I launched approximately 20 blogs last year and purchased over 60 domains. My idea was that launching a blog was as simple as falling off a bike. Some of my efforts were focused and some were JFF and some were about wanting to create a community with close friends to challenge and push each other to "do better" in all our efforts.)

4. Balance work and life a bit more. (I think the best indicator for w/l balance is having your financial house in order. While we will be paying some back taxes to get caught up for spending some time in the self-employment line, my family is entering 2010 with a pretty good base from which to grow out balance. When I am personally stressed about money, the creativity is one of the first things to show the duress. This usually results in an abnormally quiet presence within my social media networks. This year I hope to level the hyper-participation with more time away from the screen.)

5. More optimism and less stress. (Again, for me, optimism is an essential part of my plan. While you can't always plan for adversity, the way you look at it is often much more critical and important that the adverse event itself. I know if I had come out of Dell with FEAR rather than CONFIDENCE I would have had a much harder time establishing my initial consulting practice. So we can all work on optimism. And we can try and take action, or often non-action, based on a larger view of life as good, rather than life as hard. We can't keep the hard away, but we can choose how hard it feels. <Wow, that was an amazing statement I just wrote. An Ah Ha for sure.>)

6. Do better. (I recently read a book by a tennis player who suffered a broken neck and lost his father in the same year. During his struggle to rediscover his motivation for living as well as playing professional tennis, his motto became "Getting Better." That's it. No matter where we are we can do better. We can turn over one more act of patience in the face of stress. We can slow down on the highway when we feel the tension building and anger rising. Basically we can all do better. The motto of "Getting Better" seems to contain the whole nugget of truth for me and expression of the goal. It is not about arriving at the top of the mountain, it is about seeing and feeling the entire path on the way up. After all, the peak we see is just the closest one. At the top of this one we will see there is another, even higher, peak ahead.

So finally, I would like to show one more self-reflecting graphic. This is my TweetReach graphic for the last 50 tweets. Suffice it to say, however, that this ratio captures the essence of my participation on Twitter.

What I see is that nearly half of my tweets are @replies. Or tweets to someone. "A conversation."

About one quarter of my tweets are ReTweets, or RTs. When someone just RTs and does not generate any new content they are not really participating, in my opinion.

Finally, about one quarter of my tweets are original content. Either I have found something of interest to social media folks, or I have found something that made me laugh outloud, or I am expressing some epiphany or laugh of the moment. I have not ever tweeted a coupon code or a teeth whitening ad. And no one has ever tweeted on my behalf.

So for you, I hope 2010 brings lots of wonderful conversations. And perhaps they will be conversations between you and me. And I hope you are successful in creating your work/life balance and building joy and optimism into your everyday experience.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/goals-2010

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