the MARTINI SHAKER

Time for marching out one’s laundry list of good intentions for the coming year as a way to get them focused and motivated to self-improve. For the most part, I’ve never really done a new year’s resolution list. In away, I almost made one last year, but it wasn’t quite a list of resolutions¹. This year, yes sir, I’m doing one.

On the top of my list: I will refrain from clicking any links to blog posts that are worded as [number] [adjective] ways to [verb] [noun]. You know what I’m talking about. “70 Fantastic Ways To Increase Site Traffic” or “35 Jizz-tastic jQuery Plugins.” That stuff is productivity porn poison, folks. And, I’m going to do my best not to swallow any more of it.

I am going to do my best to finish a long-form writing project. I’ve been writing here and there, working toward completing a book. I’ve made a couple of references to it before on here but haven’t said much about it because I wasn’t really sure where it was going. I have a good idea of where it’s going now, and I’m fired up to finish it. Although I should give myself a hard deadline, I won’t because I know I’ll just disappoint myself when I don’t meet my own expectations. I’ll just be happy if it’s done by the end of 2010.

Speaking of disappointing myself, I’m going to do a better job of managing my own expectations. I’ve always done a fairly good job of managing expectations with others, but have done not such a good job for myself. Time to fix that.

I am going to take time to click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the noisiest sources of spam. No longer will I let unnecessary emails clog up my junk folder. That shit has to go. Less junk = less email = less time spent in my email client².

I am going to create at least one iPhone application. I have an idea for three different applications. I’d like to complete at least one of them. Of course, this means that I will also need to teach myself Objective-C. Looks like it’s time to hit the bookstore.

In order to throw a monkey wrench into all these big plans, I also want to make sure that I don’t rabbit hole myself too much. For instance, I don’t want to get so deep into any one of the above goals that I forsake the rest. I want to be able to turn as much creative output around as I can. If I obsess too much one way or another, it all just ends up collecting dust on the shelf. Kind of circles back to the managing expectations thing. Same, but different in many shades.

_I am going to do my best to squelch my lizard brain. That damned lizard brain is responsible for killing so many creative ideas because of the fear it injects into your conscience. It sure keeps me from doing a lot of great stuff for a variety of reasons. It’s time to send that lizard brain packing ASAP.

Amidst all this ambition, I am going to make time to slow down. I have a huge problem running myself into the ground and burning myself out because I will go hard for an extended period of time churning out work without any sort of recharging period. That has to come to an end. I’m getting too old to effectively do that anymore. So far, I’ve come up with the notion of having themed evenings such as Cinema Sunday or Wii Wednesday. Let’s not forget Treadmill Tuesdays and Thursdays. That should be enough to get me started.

Now, I’m off to prepare for a little prototype project that I’m creating today with a friend in Portland. Hope you have a safe and happy New Year!