It’s officially February. If you remember the study I cited at the beginning of the year, most of you with New Year’s resolutions have already let them go by the wayside.

How about those of you who picked a theme instead? How is your theme coming along?

I ran out and bought three books on organization. And all of them sit, partially skimmed. If I looked around myself, at home or at work, and said, “OK, organize it” then I wouldn’t know where to start. It would overwhelm me.

You don’t have to do it all at once.

That’s the great thing about a theme – you have all year to work on it. I don’t have to get it all done right now. Every time something is disorganized, my boyfriend likes to say with a smile, “It’s the year of organization!” And I like to say right back, “It’s the YEAR of organization – not the JANUARY of organization.”

The problem with resolutions is that once you’ve missed a few days of working out or had a few too many trips to McDonald’s you feel like you’ve failed and you quit. The theme doesn’t let me quit. It’s all year, baby! If I don’t fold the laundry for two weeks, it’s OK. I’ll get there. It’s only January.

Your theme is probably a huge honkin’ goal. Break it down. Pick a small portion of it and make it the theme for that month.

Here’s how the Year of Organization looks for me:

January: Home Office
February: Kitchen
March: Car
April: Bedroom
May: Outdoors
June: Laundry room
July: Living room
August: Bathrooms
September: Hallways & closets
October: Bedroom closet
November: TBD
December: TBD

Plan to fall behind… a little.

I’m allowing myself leniency and flexibility in the last two months. I know that I’ll find behind, and I also know that I’ll find something I didn’t expect that needs work. This takes a little pressure off of me – I won’t be doubling up on things because I forgot about this or that, and my year isn’t so full that if life gets in the way (as it so often does) I can take a break.

Don’t forget the little things.

Overarching all of this are the intangibles of organization – organizing my time, schedule, finances and expectations. I work on those things every month. I don’t work hard at them. I keep up the work I did last year (the Year of Finances), making a budget and sticking to it every two weeks. I keep a calendar with important dates, etc. That’s not the sort of stuff that can be done in a month, nor can it wait for a particular month to be scheduled for it.

It works!

The interesting thing I’ve found just by organizing my home office in January, is that when my physical space is organized those intangible organization problems are lessened. Rationally I know that if my documents are where I can find them, then things will go faster. But I think it’s interesting that my work schedule feels less cluttered and claustrophobic because my office is not cluttered and claustrophobic.

There just might be something to this organization thing!

Stay tuned for an update on January’s mini-theme, the Home Office. I’ll be posting photos.

Photo credit: Sarah and Mike… Probably via Flickr

As I lay on the couch, piecing together my idea for a post on themes versus resolutions, I went through the various themes I’d had in previous years, out loud to my boyfriend.

“’07 was well, just surviving. ’08 was the Year of Relationships. And this year was the Year of Finances.”

“So what’s 2010?” he asked.

I took a deep breath.

The Year of Organization.

My theme is usually based on the big hairy elephant in the room. Last year, I was over-drafting my bank account at least once a month. I never had enough money to last till the next paycheck. I had zero savings and three maxed out credit cards. I was perpetually without and didn’t have anything to show for it.

Enter 2009: The Year of Finances. It took me a while to figure out what would work for me. I had a lot of bad money habits and I really didn’t want to change many of them. After a few months of trying different things out, I finally got on board with Dave Ramsey. As I related in my previous post, I was able to not only stop over-drafting my bank account, but I paid of the credit cards, got current on my student loans, paid all my medical bills, and socked away almost three months of living expenses. In total, I paid down nearly $5,000 in debt.

So, when I say 2010 will be the Year of Organization, I know it will be a challenge.

The Year of Finances sucked. It wasn’t all la-la-la, I have so much money to throw into things. I had to budget, I had to forgo vacations, I didn’t get to buy any tech gadgets… and I had to start drinking coffee at home. I’m kidding, but it really was a painful change to make. I had a lot of great support from other Ramsey-ites (thanks to Michelle, Ashley and Kendra!), which helped.

Why this theme

As I said in the previous post, you should pick a theme that solves the most of your problems. And most of my problems these days seem to come from a complete and utter lack of organization. And there is mounting evidence that if I don’t make 2010 the Year of Organization, it might kill me.

I have two jobs.
I love my “day” job working in marketing research and don’t see that changing anytime soon. I work for a company that genuinely cares about me; I have a great boss and believe that management wants me here. I also have my own company that I work with after-hours and on weekends, which scratches my entrepreneurial itch but also fills my every waking moment outside of work. Having two careers is tough, and there’s a lot of schedule juggling to make it all happen without losing any integrity or quality in one or the other.

I have time-consuming allergies.
I have six – count them – SIX allergies. Four are environmental (dust mites, cat hair, mold and trees), but the other two are the tough ones: food allergies. I’m allergic to both wheat and soy, which means I pretty much can’t eat anything manufactured, processed or pre-packaged. I take medication for my environmental allergies, which works sometimes. I have to wash our comforter, comforter cover, sheets, special allergy pillow covers and mattress cover in hot bleach water every other week, which usually eats up an entire Saturday. I have to pre-cook my meals for the week, or I end up eating stuff I shouldn’t or not eating anything at all. And if I don’t make everything click exactly right, my allergic reactions usually take the form of intense fatigue.

I can’t say no.
They always tell people to make realistic goals. Saying “no” just isn’t a realistic goal for me. Start a local chapter of Social Media Club? Yes. Start a company? Yes. Put on a conference? Yes. Write some ebooks? Yes. Sit on this special committee? Yes. Take on a new client? Be on a radio show? Plan an unconference? Write for this new blog network? Yes, yes, yes and yes please! I like doing a lot of things. But that takes organization.

I’ve always been “messy” and I’m tired of it.
I don’t want to shatter anyone’s perception of me, but um… I’m really messy. Right now, I have four coffee cups on my desk, a spoon, two open bottles of water, and various tiny pieces of paper with notes on them. I never really finish the process of getting the laundry into the appropriate drawers, if by some miracle I fold them, and I don’t use my home office because I can’t move in it. When I was a kid, my mom coined the term “fire path” to describe the clear lane from my bed to the door in an otherwise unruly bedroom. I’ve always blamed this messiness and disorganization on my creativity… a big brain like mine simply can’t be bothered with details. But this isn’t really who I want to be. And I’ll be the first to admit that a neatly-appointed space just feels nicer.

I know there’s a long road ahead as I fumble through what doesn’t work before I find what does, but a New Year’s Theme shouldn’t be easy. And if I have anything like the kind of success I had in the Year of Finances, then the Year of Organization is going to be a very good one.

If you haven’t shared already, what’s your theme for 2010? Why?

Photo courtesy of austinevan via Flickr.

Every year after Christmas, people sit down and review the past year. They look ahead and come up with an improbable list of to-do items for the coming year. You’re going to run four times a week, not eat fast food, do a monthly budget you live and die by, put 20 percent of your paycheck into savings, spend more time with family, learn to knit, take a Spanish class, get to work on time, get 8 hours of sleep… essentially, you’re going to become perfect.

And then you don’t do one of them. And they all go down the drain because if you’re not going to be perfect, well then why do a bunch of stuff that’s no fun?

At least, that’s been my experience. Every year, I got swept up in the spirit of self-improvement and made ridiculously long lists of things I was going to do differently, learn or stop doing. I made calendars and schedules and stuck to them for about… oh, maybe three weeks.

Which makes me average it turns out. According to time management firm FranklinCovey, only a third of people will even make it to the end of January.

The end of JANUARY.

The cure is supposedly to make a specific resolution. Perhaps pick just one of the resolutions I listed in the first paragraph and go with that.

But that hasn’t worked for me. I have that Gen Y disease of ambition. Just one of those resolutions feels so… flimsy.

Why you need a theme

Here’s my problem with these specific resolutions: they may not be the right answer. Maybe you find that putting 20 percent of your paycheck into savings isn’t going to work because you can’t stop over-drafting your bank account. Or, you find out your knees can’t handle running. Or, you find it impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And then you just give up.

What you need is a theme, something that sets the tone for your year, and gives you a banner to work under. In the end, what is your overall goal? Is it to be fit and healthy, to have good finances, to feel rested? Make it the Year of Finances, or the Year of Fitness, or the Year of Relaxation.

For the past three years, I’ve picked a theme for my year. And it’s worked.

2007 was the Year of Survival. I got sober in April (a late start to the year, I know), and basically just learned how to live all over again. This theme was more or less picked for me. I can’t take credit for that one.

2008 was the Year of Relationships, as you can clearly see in my blog (here, here, here and here). Having learned to survive, I went about learning how to survive with others. My relationships with men were all over the board as I tried to figure out what I wanted and who I was. My relationships with family and friends got some work also. I think this was a subconscious theme.

2009 was the Year of Finances. Honestly, this was the first year I set a resolute theme at the beginning of the year with an earnest desire to tackle it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I fumbled around with Quicken Online and heard about Mint.com and read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, but what ended up working for me was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. I didn’t get on board with it until May. But I didn’t give up on my finances because that theme hung over my head all year. I knew that there was an answer and having a theme, and not a specific resolution, helped me gather the research, feedback and experimentation I needed to find my answer.

How to pick a theme

The more my life becomes calm and healthy, the more the areas that need work seem to stick out. I’m not blessed with the kind of clarity in my life where I can just go, “Oh, I really need to work on my finances! I can see how this contributes to my other problems.” Yeah, I don’t have that.

So I sort of feel my way through my life, asking myself what feels bad, where do I feel negative emotion in my day, then trying to trace it back to the source. I felt awful when my bank account over-drafted for the billionth time. And oh, hey! That seems to come up a lot. Maybe I should work on that.

Ask yourself these questions:
- What is causing the most problems in my life?
- What is giving me the most chaos?
- What are the most inconvenient things happening?
- What seems to be happening over and over again even though I try not to?
- Where do I see a spike in negative emotion in my daily life?
- What would give me the most peace if I could find a solution for it?

If you’re having trouble picking between two (or three or four…), pick the one that’s solves the most problems. Last year I was trying to choose between the Year of Finances and the Year of Health & Fitness. When I made a list of the problems each would solve, the Finances Year solved a lot more problems, including some of my health problems (medical care is expensive, yo!).

What happens next…

The amazing thing about having a theme for your year is that it’s about changing your mindset toward a certain area of your life. You’ve decided to change some area of your life that you previously carried an attitude of indifference toward. Lots of things will change.

Take my 2009 Year of Finances for example: not only did I stop over-drafting my bank account (which could’ve been my short-sighted New Year’s Resolution), but I’ve paid off all my credit cards, survived meeting my hefty insurance deductible for health care (thanks to surgery), and stored away almost three months of living expenses in my savings account. And since I decided I needed an alternate stream of income, I started my first business and have a steady stream of clients. Year of Finances indeed!

Of course your theme can fail. The number one reason resolutions fail is because people aren’t committed to them in the first place. If you aren’t committed to your theme, then you won’t move on it.

Move forward with a positive attitude. Remember this is the year you will change your [finances/health/career/love life/insert theme here]!

The great thing is that area of your life will be forever changed, not just temporarily shifted. As I move into my 2010 theme, I don’t stop working on my finances. My attitude toward finances has been changed forever.

Wanna know my theme for 2010? Read the follow-up post here. What’s your theme for 2010?

Photo courtesy of Tojosan via Flickr.

I’m getting a little tired of Gen Y bloggers proudly flouting their “workaholism” in post after post of how they love their jobs, don’t see a need for work/life balance anymore and question whether or not their relationships are holding them back.

Of course, I’m guilty of several of these posts myself.

I remember Ryan Paugh from BrazenCareerist once wondering in a post if he was going to feel embarrassed by something he wrote 10 years later (I couldn’t find the link). His conclusion was that he probably would, and I concur. Even just a year later, I look back at some of my own posts and shake my head. I’ve changed my mind about some of those sanctimonious posts I wrote. (Maybe I’ll change my mind about this sanctimonious post, too at some point.)

There’s nothing like a good round of cancer scares to put things in perspective. As I’ve been forced to relax and let my “workaholism” tendencies fade into the background, I’ve figured out a few things. One is that the stress in my life came from the label I gave myself as a “workaholic.” I have found that I’m not actually working on less projects now, but that my mind has released the “have-to, have-to, have-to” thoughts that kept my mind racing even when I wasn’t working on something.

I’ve also watched my boyfriend run his distribution business over the past few months. He travels 3 hours away to tend his business weekly, aside from his local branch. He has a business in the sense that he’s not freelancing or consulting or designing websites – he has an office manager, employees with health insurance, customers who demand his time, and expenses that would make me cringe. He experiences a kind of daily stress and time demands that we Gen Y I-run-my-personal-brand types can’t imagine. I don’t care how many nights you slept in your office waiting for your start-up site to go live.

So here’s the deal. You’re not a workaholic. And you’re no different from the young-go-getters of the 1980s. (Please watch “Working Girl.” I mean, those people were always on and always “working.” We’re not the first people to discover taking our jobs seriously.)

We’re simply at the work-hard-to-get-ahead life stage. Like I said, we’re not the first. We’re supposed to be working hard right now because later, we’re going to want to take a break. I know, I know. You luuuuuuhhv your job. Great. For now. Later you will find that you luuuuuuuhhv being home to cook dinner for your kids. The other thing is that “getting ahead” looks different today than it did 20 years ago. Our parents worked late hours, took extra projects on, and went to night school to get higher degrees and certifications. We still do all that stuff, just now we’re also tending to our blogs, websites, overall web presence, personal brands, etc.

We don’t have a “life” to balance yet.
We’re in our twenties. We don’t have kids yet (for the most part), and we might have girlfriends or boyfriends, but not the kind of relationships that require time, energy and work to maintain because they simply haven’t become that important or demanding yet. We’re not trying to figure out how to make our 10-year-old marriage last because we see the love of earlier years fading. We don’t have children pulling us away from our “me” time. Jesus, you’ve still got time for the gym. Ask a working mom if she’s got time for that… if she does it’s at 5 a.m. while everyone else is still sleeping. That is what work/life balance is – not trying to schedule time in for a trip to the bar with friends.

We regard our life activities like they are work.
We blog because we love it, and yes, it gets us ahead in our careers, but that’s not why we keep at it. Blogging, networking, going to social media conferences and volunteering for organizations isn’t your job. We do it because in our day and age it is the new softball team. I spoke on a panel at an economic summit this week and I tried to stretch my mind to figure out how this will advance my career. My boyfriend pointed out that I did it because I think its fun. Oh yeah. That’s my LIFE, not my WORK.

We haven’t suffered the consequences of workaholism yet.
You probably haven’t even been burnt out yet, let alone laid off from your first job at a start-up, driven to real addiction, been divorced or suffered stress-related health problems. When you get there, remind me again of how much you OMG luv luv luv your job. Because I want to know if it was worth it. (The only one I haven’t done is divorce. And no, the 80-hour work weeks from the start-up that went under were not worth it. I’d happily give back the crow’s feet those earned me.)

We’re still seeking definition and identity with labels.
I wrote two weeks ago about my struggle to let go of my self-image as a go-getter, a woman on the make, etc. Elysa Rice seconded my “who am I if not a…” idea. We’ve been students forever, and now we’re joining the workforce and struggling with this notion that we need a label. We don’t. It’s a personal revolution in thought that occurs when you realize that you just are and that being a “workaholic” or a rising star or a go-getter is just a label that you try to live up to.

We like to inflate our own self-importance.
I’m really talking to myself as much to anyone else here. I think we inherently have some kind of egoistic tick that makes us trump up our own value. Gen Y doesn’t do this anymore than any other generation… we just have a syndicated platform by which to do it, in my opinion. When I declared myself a workaholic with no respect for this work/life balance nonsense, I was always rushing around in a state of self-importance trying to do everything I “needed” to do. My reality was that when I backed off, nobody suffered as a result of my loss in super-productivity, in fact no one really noticed.

I’m definitely not the oldest of my blogging compadres, but sometimes I feel like my life experiences have aged me a little. I guess there’s a part of me that wants to save my fellow twenty-somethings some of the pain I went through learning things the hard way. But then again, I didn’t listen to the people who tried to warn me. I figured I was different. I was unique. I wasn’t.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong. What do you think – are we really workaholics?

When things ended with Date #4, I made a promise to myself: I wouldn’t get into another relationship for six months. It was clear that I couldn’t handle being in a relationship without losing my momentum in other areas of my life, and I was beginning to see a pattern of jumping from one long-term relationship to another. I’d been a serial monogamist since I was 14. One relationship after another. Some started before others had even ended. It was time for a change.

So, no relationships for six months. I decided that they were simply too big a distraction for the kinds of big things I was trying to achieve – applying to business school, saving for my first house, climbing the corporate ladder, crafting my own business, etc.

Did that mean I wasn’t going to have sex for six months either? I mean, let’s be realistic here. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I don’t really have it in me to sleep with someone I’m not romantically interested in, or rather couldn’t be romantically interested in. I tried the “friends with benefits” thing with GIWS, who actually ended up becoming one of my best friends after our relationship ended, but that got messy fast and I decided for the sake of our friendship that needed to be an “emergencies only” kind of thing.

New Year’s Eve rolls around. And I pick up a guy in a bar. And take him home. Ahem. I. Do. Not. Do. This. OK, well I haven’t done it since like, college. But I sort of figured, why not? I got home at 6 a.m. and slept the whole next day. Then we went out again, and I got home at 10:30 a.m. the next day. And I got a bad cold.

I’ve come to the rapid conclusion that not only are relationships a distraction, but so is sex. You heard me: sex is a distraction.

The pursuit of, anticipation of, before and after of – major distractions. How much time do women spend shaving their legs, bleaching their teeth, plucking their eyebrows, getting or giving themselves manicures and pedicures, shopping for the perfect ass jeans, putting together an outfit for a night out, doing our makeup, blow-drying our hair, posturing at the bar, convincing ourselves we can hunt down a worthwhile guy in a club when we know it’s not true, talking about it with our girlfriends, wondering if he’s going to call, and if so, when? I don’t even know how to figure out how much time guys spend thinking about it, but it’s safe to assume it’s at least 75 percent of their waking hours.

And at the end of the day, you still haven’t studied for the GMAT. You’re too tired to go for a run, and you get such a bad cold from your lack of sleep due to Mr. New Year’s Eve’s snoring that you have to take an afternoon off of work during a critical proving-yourself-in-your-new-promotion phase.

Is it worth it? Is sex just one really big distraction? It’s exciting, enticing, and when it’s good, it’s even a little dirty. But it’s fleeting. And what’s been passed up, what effort has been skimped, that lasts. A lower GMAT score, a lesser business school. A missed run can equal three missed runs since you got out of your groove, then you run a minute-less-than-average mile at your 5K. And being less than 110 percent on your career? Well, I don’t even need to go there.

Perhaps this is really why there’s such a gap between male and female earning after their 20s. It’s a lot more socially acceptable for a man to stay out of relationships while pursuing his career, or in the words of less eloquent men, “getting their shit together.” But that’s not the case for 20-something women. There must be something wrong with us if we’re not doing the sex-dating-relationships thing while pursuing our career goals as well. Somehow, we are less feminine. We become “career ladies” or are seen as ball-busters. We are told that taking our work seriously makes us masculine, and we are given tips on being sexy and career-driven at the same time. Well, that part is actually OK with me. I was clamoring along with the rest of you for Hilary to get rid of the pantsuit (seriously, woman, wear a skirt!).

I think a lot of young women are not necessarily in the settle-down life stage, and yet still feel pressured to date and search for The One in anticipation of the onset of that life stage. Why not embrace that stage? And if you still have too much on your plate, why not take sex off the menu in favor of something that will have a greater impact on your life than getting laid on New Year’s Eve?

So, I’m off it all. Sex, dating, relationships. All of it. At least while I prep for the GMAT this month. When it comes down to it, I’ve got priorities – too many if you ask anyone around me. And sex just doesn’t make the list.

Yeah. Ask me what I think in two weeks.

Photo by Bottom-Feeder via Flickr.

Let me guess: you’re really an entrepreneur at heart; you’re just temporarily stuck in this corporate job, right? One of these days you’re going to bust out of cubicle hell and make a break for the Gen Y holy of holies, owning your own business. And it’s going to be awesome. You’ll be your own boss and you’ll run your company so much cooler than the corporation you’re just biding your time at now. I know. Trust me, I know.

In the meantime, you’re cranking away in front of your PC from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., fearing layoffs and keeping an impatient eye on the recession economy.

Here’s the thing though: you shouldn’t just be biding your time in your stuffy corporate job. I found in high school and college that the level of my education was entirely up to how much I wanted to learn. I’ve always been one for making the most out of a less-than-ideal situation, and my corporate job is no exception.

I do my job like it’s my own business. I run it like a business, like a separate entity that provides a service to the corporation I work for. I’ve heard it called “innerpreneur” or “interpreneur.” When people ask who I answer to, my boss tells them that I’m like my own little company. Of course, I still answer to him, have to keep regular business hours, only get my allotted 10 vacation days, etc. But he considers me to fairly independent.

Just like in school, I have two options: I can do what’s needed to get by, or I can make the best of it and really learn something useful. Even if you have a lot of built-in structure in your role, you can still take your position and see how to run it like your own company. It’s great practice for when you finally do have your own company, and your superiors will start to be a lot like my parents were when I was in school – they’ll give you more and more freedom as they see you handling it on your own.

What services do you provide?
The most important question you will ask yourself as an entrepreneur is, what am I providing? As an innerpreneur, you need to ask the same question. As a marketing research analyst, I provide accurate, timely research to my clients that is easy-to-understand and useful in their roles.

Who are your “clients”?
As an entrepreneur you will need to determine who your target consumer or client is. In your corporate job, you also have “clients” – those people who consume your services. It might be a certain department or set of departments; it might be your boss. In my corporate role, my “clients” are the advertising departments of four regional branches of our company, as well as smaller clients in other departments.

Have a marketing plan.
By now you’ve certainly been given the advice to “sell yourself” or “toot your own horn.” I never really understood what people meant by that. Was I supposed to run around telling people how wonderful I was at my job? Not quite. I figured this out during the recession when I saw my industry making sweeping layoffs. I knew I needed to sell my position. I set to work selling my services to my clients. I made a list of the services I provided and the benefits to my clients. In other words, I started emailing the managers of the advertising departments and talking directly with the account executives about what I could do to help them do their jobs better.

I do seasonal marketing. I send emails during the holidays (a busy selling period) letting the advertising departments know how I can save them time, and I use the slower periods to extol the virtues of our planning software and my training opportunities. It works. That’s how you sell yourself, and avoid layoffs.

What are your profits and losses?
As the owner of a company, you’re going to get pretty familiar with P&Ls (profits and losses). This is basically a ledger of what’s coming in and what’s going out. I like to think of this process as doing a return on investment (ROI) on my position. Your salary is your “losses” – that’s how much your “business” is spending every year. It’s probably hard to quantify your “profits” – that’s how much you bring in for the company. You probably don’t have a revenue-producing role; it’s most likely more indirect. As a research analyst, I can tie my role to revenue through the research I provide to our advertising department to facilitate sales. Try to think of your position in terms of this. The closer you can tie yourself to revenue, the more secure your job will be.

Are your “clients” satisfied?
Just like I would in my own café (that’s the business I hope to one day own), I check up with my clients to see if they’re satisfied with the services I’m providing. I check in with managers, account executives, my boss, and our corporate offices regularly to see if they’re getting everything they need from me when they need it. I ride out on sales calls periodically to see my product used in the field, and I survey my clients to see what’s missing. I go back to my boss or corporate offices when necessary and/or make adjustments accordingly.

Is there a more efficient way to do this?
One thing we all say we’ll do when we own our companies is cut out all the red tape. If you’re in a publicly traded corporation, there’s only so much you can do (thank you, Sarbane-Oxley) to cut out certain kinds of bureaucracy. But you can eliminate inefficiencies in your role. The four branches I provide services for were running the same report four different ways. I found a way to streamline, and our corporate offices are considering adopting the changes across all 14 branches we own now.

Have a processes manual.
Good god, I do a lot of stuff. I run various weekly, quarterly, twice-yearly and yearly reports. Some need feedback from my “clients” and the rest are run from five different databases. There are processes for running those reports, training new executives, organizing research studies, cleaning up databases, updating research slides, ad nauseum. There’s no way I can keep all that straight in my head. And what happens if I get promoted, laid off, hit by a bus, or move to another company? I’ll have to spend my last two weeks trying to do a brain dump the size of a small country. So, I keep a processes manual. I record how I run this or that report, what it’s used for, who needs it, how often, etc. I also keep track of the flow of these processes. How do the requests for services come in, to whom do they travel when they are completed?

Have job descriptions.
If you’re thinking of running your own show one day, you’ll need to read “E-Myth Revisited.” In it Michael Gerber talks about how even if you’re a one-man show for a while, one day you don’t want to be. You will play a nominal role in your company (if you so choose), watching it run like a well-oiled machine from a distance. It will be a thing of beauty. He recommends that you create roles for your company – a VP of marketing, production, and sales; managers; produc
ers; etc. where applicable. The idea is that even though your name is penciled into all those roles now, later it won’t be. So, I did that with my job. I came up with job descriptions for the different hats I wear, the various services I provide. Sure, they won’t grow like a business would; one person will probably do all those jobs in this position, but I know how to describe every job I do. And my bosses and predecessors will know as well.

What are your hours of operation?
Yeah, I know. You probably don’t have a lot of control over this. However, you might have more than you think if you start thinking about it. It makes sense for my “business” to be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. because that is when my “clients” need my services. That’s when they expect me to be open for business, so those are my hours. If I could legitimately tell my boss that different hours of operation would be better, say because I’m now dealing with outsourcing to India, he would probably give me a fair hearing because everything I’ve done until now has shown that I have buy-in with my “business.”

Photo by ballgame68 via Flickr.

I’ve been cursed my whole life with being both right- and left-brained. Not a lot of people can go from designing a new website to working with raw demographic data tables for an unrelated project. I loved logic and trig while being a total art kid in high school. In college, I double-majored in philosophy and art, though I have to admit I could see no use for aesthetic theory – I couldn’t handle philosophy of art.

Thus far, it’s been really useful in my career. When I worked at a non-profit start-up straight out of college, I needed to wear a lot of hats. I recruited, I mentored, I edited news articles, I did research, I designed web pages, I coded, and I took bids on jobs. I had to be able to turn my attention from page design one moment to researching interviewees the next. As a marketing research analyst in a small department, part of the job description was that the candidate should be able to turn on a dime, and I do, from logo design to demographics mapping.

However, I’ve recently realized that my wonderful little gift is also my curse. There are a lot of things I’m good at. I’m not being an egoist; I’m really pretty good at all sorts of stuff. I like trying new things, and enthusiasm will take you far. I’ve been a DJ at a radio station and a nightclub, artist, barista, magazine editor, proofreader, new media director, special events coordinator, bartender, research analyst, blogger, IT consultant. At some point, I was even a pre-med major. I’ve rock-climbed, knitted, done ethnic cooking, trained for marathons, played softball, volleyball and soccer, been a vegetarian, and done some motivational speaking.

The problem? I’m all over the place.

When recently thinking about my career, I realized that I had no specialty. I’ve always had to twist my résumé credentials to fit the requirements (philosophy degree = critical thinking skills + analytical skills + thesis research = market researcher!). Don’t get me a wrong – I’m a great hire. However, I’d really like to be great at something.

I’d like to be great at something.

Not just good. Not okay. Not just ‘oh, yeah, I did that, too.’

I look at the people I admire, and they are either the giants of their fields or they’ve got a particular niche cornered. I’d like to really have my head wrapped around something, not just have a surface understanding or street knowledge about it. I’m tired of being OK at a lot of things.

I’m ready to be great at something. And not just to be Great, but to put the work into it to really understand it, to be an authority on it. When I was a philosophy major, I dreamed of being the Heidegger scholar studied enough to get a glimpse of his unpublished, untranslated papers tucked away in a small German library. As a new media director, I dreamed of taking our little start-up site nationwide, even global.

Now, I dream other dreams… dreams of a research analyst (believe it or not), dreams of a blogger, dreams of an entrepreneur. There are so many things I could do though; how do I choose? How do you know which one you have the potential to be great at?

This is part one in a two-part series.

In an earlier post, I announced that I would begin a new accountability regime: posting my goals and my progress toward them to this blog once a month. Several of you, both readers and fellow bloggers, expressed interest in doing the same. I’m inviting everyone to participate who would like to post something similar on their blogs. Email me your blog entries and I’ll post them links to them here as well.

Without any further ado, I give you my first Hold Me Accountable post.

Physical
This is probably the area where I’ve lost the most steam as of late. It is also the one that I would like to get back on track with the most. When I treat my body well, it treats me well. Everything else runs so much more smoothly in my life when I feel good physically. There are three components to my physical goals: exercise, diet and overall health.

Exercise
I took up running in late December last year. I put running down around the beginning of May. I had been training for a relay marathon and once it was over, so was the training. I need a goal in order to stay motivated in my running, even though I love it. I know I’m going to feel good after a run (phenomenal, actually), but the motivation I need is when I really don’t feel like waking up early and lacing up my shoes. So, I’m going to sign up for a half-marathon. I’m confident I can do it if I start training now. I’ll do short runs on Mondays, hard runs on Wednesdays, cross-train on Saturdays and long runs on Sundays.
Goals: Sign up for half-marathon in October; beginning training schedule.

Diet
I don’t mean diet in the sense that I’m trying to lose weight. I’m not. I simply want to give my body good fuel, not crap. The main threat to my diet is the vending machines at work. If I forget (or am too lazy) to make my lunch, I’m known to eat a lunch of chips and soda. Blech. I’ve already begun to make dinner at night and bring leftovers to work. Note: This helps financial goals as well – double-plus bonus! I’m also really bad about keeping my refrigerator at home stocked. When it’s full, not only do I eat better and save money on eating out, but it gives me an odd sense of fulfillment. Hmm.
Goals: Cut out soda, vending machine snacks; bring healthy lunches and snacks to work; keep home fridge stocked.

Health
You’ve heard me complain about my sinus infections ad nauseum, I know. I bought a neti pot (for nasal irrigation) because I heard from many, many sources that it works wonders. I’ve been too chicken to try it, even though I feel confident it will help. I’ve been battling some serious fatigue, probably due to sinus infections and not exercising, which is added incentive for the workout routine. Finally, it’s been about 3 years (!) since I’ve been to the dentist. Yikes.
Goals: Use neti pot three times a week for one month; see dentist.

Relationships
My biggest issue with my relationships right now is that I’m spending an awful lot of time with a certain someone instead of spending some time with myself, my friends and my family. This was fine and well in the budding stages of the relationship, but now that things have settled down a bit I desperately need to hook back up with my friends and fam.
Goals: Hang out with my three best friends for some serious QT at least once this month; visit my aunt and my grandmother.

Career
For now, thing seem to be going really well with my 8-5 job. I’m relatively focused and my recent annual performance evaluation was stellar (including a raise!). Guess where nothing is happening? That’s right – my business. uSavvy, my IT consultancy, has one client, no actual tax ID number, nothing, plus a website that’s just sitting there, all designed and hosted and not actually up. Include my blog in here, and I haven’t been posting as regularly as I would like, which is about 3-4 times per week.
Goals: Obtain tax ID number and sole proprietor status; open bank account; finish site buildout and get online; buy business cards; write business plan; blog 3-4 times per week.

Financial
I have two areas I’m currently working on financially. I’ve got terrible credit (hey, I drank heavily during those pivotal post-college years), and practically no savings… OK, no savings if you aren’t counting that $50 in my ING Orange savings account. I started the ball rolling on this one yesterday though. My pay increase will show up in my next paycheck and instead of rejoicing at the extra money, I already set up an autodraft for the increase amount to pay down my credit card. I also have an autodraft set up for a student loan I am rehabilitating, as well as one for $50 per paycheck to my savings account. Once the credit card is paid down, I will up my savings autodraft to include the amount from the pay increase. The problem with my savings account is that I almost always tap into it. I’m a little more solid financially right now, so my goal is not to do that.
Goals: Pay off credit card in 2.5 months; continue savings without touching it.

Spirituality
I don’t talk about my spirituality very much on this blog, even though it’s a big part of my life. The truth is that I’ve been a little disappointed in my spirituality lately… or my lack thereof. I’m not a churchgoer, that’s just not for me. However, I do pray and meditate. I include my sobriety as part of this picture because the way I stay sober is to work a spiritual program. I go to three or four 12-step meetings every week, but I’d like to start branching out a little more into more groups besides my home group, particularly to this one young people’s group. I’d also like to try to meditate in the mornings, even if it’s just for a short time period.
Goals: Attend one non-home group 12-step meeting per week; meditate twice a week.

General
Finally, this part relates to my overall life goals, mood and emotions. I’d say lately I’ve been in a funk. Definitely in a funk. It’s not enough for me to focus on my short-term goals, so I need to keep my long-term goals on the burners, too. I really would like to move to a larger city. I would like to either advance to the next level of my career in research or I would like to take my business full-time. I would like to be a less selfish person on a day-to-day basis. The other day I realized at the end of the day that I was the only person I had thought about all day. That sucks. And I’m guessing that it probably also makes me a pretty obnoxious person to deal with.
Goal
s: Mostly just to keep my larger life goals top-of-mind; try to think of other people and how I affect them throughout my day.

I will keep you all up-to-date with my progress on a monthly basis, at the very least. I hope that some of you will jump in and participate. It would be really great to have a community of people who are all holding each other accountable, encouraging one another and learning what works and what doesn’t in real time, wouldn’t it?

Related articles:
Got goals? Hold yourself accountable
How baby steps became a huge deal
Stand up and be accounted
How I change my habits

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I’m having a little accountability issue. As in, I have none. I have a lot of goals, not just in my career, but also in my personal life, my finances and my health. As I’ve struggled to regain my footing after falling in love, I’ve come to find my real issue is now that I simply lack the motivation to accomplish on a day-to-day basis, and that daily action is critical to the fulfillment of larger goals.

I know one thing to be true when it comes to setting goals and achieving them: the most surefire method is to chip away at it one step at a time. Daily action is necessary. If you want to train to run a marathon, you’ve got to actually put your shoes on and go for a run. If you want to pay off your credit cards, you cannot charge anything to them today. I prefer to live one day at a time this way. When I start to use the word “tomorrow,” I get myself into a world of trouble. I won’t accomplish much with “I’ll run tomorrow” or “I’ll stop using my credit card tomorrow.” This method of goal procrastination will leave you stranded. You just need to start.

Enter accountability. Now that you’ve decided to go through with the daily action method you could use a little reinforcement. I used to get this through Guy I Was Seeing. Though we’re still friends, I don’t get to talk to him as much as I used to. Read more about what an accountability partner can do for you here.

What happens if you can’t find an accountability partner or group? Or if you’re the only one who ever does anything in said partnership/group? I’m not sure, but I’m taking a stab with my blog. Yep, you guys are now my accountability partners. I find it hard to make excuses to you all… mostly because my lame excuses look really bad in print. That, and I’ve sworn to be as honest and as transparent as possible.

I know I won’t meet all of my goals 100 percent of the time, but the nice thing about accountability partners is not the negative pressure – it’s the positive pressure. It’s reassuring to think you guys know what my goals are, what I’m doing to get there, and that you get to see the results when I do what I say and when I don’t. It might be corny and a little arrogant, but for some reason I have the feeling that you guys have my back.

All mushiness aside, my monthly accountability posts will basically have a “where I’m at” theme. I’ll review my goals, what I’ve done, what I haven’t done and what I plan to do. The areas in which I will be accountable are broad: physical (exercise, health, diet), relationships (family, significant other, friends), career (job, entrepreneurship), financial (credit, savings), spirituality (meditation, sobriety), general (emotion, mood, life goals).

I realize that not everyone wants to read about me, me, me, but my hope is that my transparency in these things will allow people to see what really works… and what really doesn’t. I’ll be posting the first one tomorrow.

How do you stay accountable? How do you reach your goals, little and big?

Earlier this week I ran across an amazing presentation on knowledge workers and office 2.0 on SlideShare (which is an awesome site – it’s like YouTube for presentations). Check it out:

View Upload your own

“Finally,” I thought. “Someone has defined me!” I’ve been trying to figure out a subtle way to e-mail it to my boss ever since.

Here’s the thing: Stephen Collins (the presenter) talks about “bursty” versus “busy” workers. Bursty workers are what we often define ourselves as in the Gen Y set. We may not look like we’re doing work, but we are. We might be at a café, chatting with coworkers in other departments, on Twitter… all the while, we are collecting information in our minds. We’re generating ideas; we’re rolling them around in our heads, working out the kinks.

Take myself, for example: I prefer to design web pages and logos while I’m on the treadmill. I have no idea why; it’s just what works for me. What are the odds my boss is going to let me leave the office at 4 so I can go for a run, though? I can tell you that answer: slim to none.

Bursty workers are called such because they tend to have highly productive bursts in which the majority of their work gets accomplished. They don’t want to be at a desk very often. They can often do in 30 hours what a busy worker will accomplish in 40. They surf the Web, they don’t keep normal office hours, they place importance on connecting with other departments and companies outside of their own, and they don’t mind failure. As a matter of fact, they fail a lot.

Anne Zelenka wrote the quintessential busy vs. bursty worker article more than a year ago. She says it best: “The lack of understanding between busy and burst goes beyond just the inability of the busy to see the value in using Web 2.0 tools. In almost every aspect of work, bursters look entirely unproductive and irresponsible when judged by busyness economy rules.”

You see, my boss is a busy worker. I am a bursty worker. Busy workers very rarely understand the bursty workers. Or, they try to figure out how to fit them into their paradigm: “If they produce more in less time, shouldn’t they just be producing more?” Wrong question. Collins states on his site that you simply can’t discount the time spent in thought, working out the structures.

I started e-mailing with Stephen Collins after watching that presentation, and he pointed out to me that bursty workers are not just Gen-Yers. He’s a Gen-Xer himself, and (of course) a bursty worker. Anyone can be a bursty worker, whether they are Gen Y or Boomer. Knowledge workers (anyone who works for a living at the tasks of developing or using knowledge), however, are especially apt to be bursters.

If you look at the traits of a burster, you’ll probably see the standard frustrations over Gen Y “work ethic” that our busy counterparts are always hemming and hawing over. I posit that these are not Gen Y traits, but that they are simply bursty worker traits. Due to the way that Gen Y has been brought up, we skew toward the bursty side, while our parents, and certainly our parents’ parents, skewed busy because of their environment.

I’d also like to point out that it seems now more than ever, there are more knowledge worker careers available also. My dad was a carpenter, and my mom was a dental assistant. They had to be present at their jobs during specific hours in order to produce. I am a research analyst. I sit in front of a computer most of the day. It doesn’t really matter where my computer is and when I sit at it. As I said above, I actually “produce” on the treadmill.

A problem with Gen Y’s work ethic? It’s not Gen Y. And it’s not a problem.

Note: This article was written in my head while walking around talking to coworkers, surfing the Web, reading Twitter updates, and browsing my Google Reader.