For the past few years, I’ve been following Chris Brogan’s practice of coming up with three guiding words for the coming year. Chris wrote a post about his 3 words for 2016 but here’s the basic idea:
Pick any three words that will guide you in the choices you intend to make for 2016. They should be words that let you challenge yourself as to motives and decisions. They should be words that help you guide your actions.
The idea behind there being three words (and not five or seven or one) is that you can create a kind of “triangulation” between three words, such that they can stand alone and work together.
Sharing your three words gives them a little added impact and hopefully stimulates some discussion. Here are mine. I add a few words of explanation to them, so I don’t forget what I was thinking when I picked them.
Refine
I want to take a higher level view of what I can offer, extending the concept of humanizing technology. This may take the form of developing websites with higher standards of design, UI and UX. It may also apply to other, as yet undeveloped services.
Guild
One person cannot meet all needs. I want to collaborate with others who strive to bring their best efforts to their area of expertise.
Create
The making of new things must take place frequently. While I am most comfortable repeating patterns, this ultimately just uses up time. Find new things to create, refine them, and move on.
Your turn. Share if you want or just put them away for future reference. Do go back and look at them from time to time, so that they can help keep you on track.
Have a great 2016!
Nice one Greg. I especially like “refine”. I feel that often my time is spent trying to catch up on a broad range of technologies and I lose focus on specializing my skills. Refining would be a great goal for the new year.
Thanks, Adam. Paradoxically, I think a better understanding of high level goals helps to know which specific skills we need to focus on.
Happy New Year, Greg!!
Awesome choice of words! They seem to me to be particularly well suited to who you are and what you do! I especially like Guild!
This year, I opted to chose only one word, and that is Vitality. It relates to a recent post I did on restoring personal vitality!
All the best for an happy, healthy, and prosperous 2016!!
Vitality is a great word too. I’ll have to get over and read that post. Happy New Year!