It’s the beginning of the new year.

Like a lot of people you’re probably looking back to see what you did and didn’t accomplish, and looking forward to ask yourself what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year. It’s only natural to do so with this kind of transition.

In the past around this time of year I have shared my words of the year, whether one, two, or three words. (Here’s where I did that for 2015, 2014 [year-end], 2014, 2013…)

I don’t think I’m going to do that this year.

It’s not so much because of reports that when you do that you psychologically feel like you’ve already reached your goal.

I just have this gut feeling that sharing all my goals isn’t what I need to do this year.

But what I am doing is 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever from Michael Hyatt. (I don’t have an affiliate link though I probably should.) My wife and I did it last year and loved it. We are doing it again — we are about halfway through it at the moment. It’s a great way to get focus and clarity on what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year.

And share your goals selectively with people who will push you forward and not hate on all the goals you set. Let’s face it: there are people who do just that. Or if they don’t hate on all your goals, they, out of love, really, try to convince you why you shouldn’t try something or why it is unreasonable or too risky.

So share with those who will push you and encourage you. Tweet that.

My wife and I didn’t accomplish all our goals from last year, but the ones we did accomplish we are really glad we did. The important thing is that we got clarity when things went sideways in July and August.

Whether you do Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days to your Best Year Ever or Jon Acuff’s 30 Days of Hustle, do yourself a favor and find a way to set reasonable, actionable goals and find people who will keep you accountable.

I’m pretty excited about 2016. I hope you are, too.

Photo: David Hermans

This past week, my wife and I worked on a course from Michael Hyatt called “5 Days to Your Best Year Ever.” We bought the course last year, but we didn’t finish it.

This year, we were determined to finish it. And we are glad we did. Because now we have an outline for accomplishing our goals in 2015.

I’ll share the details of those goals with you at a later date, but right now I want to do something that I’ve been doing the past several years with mixed success: sharing some theme words for the upcoming year. For 2014, my theme words were Intention, Boring, and Listen. I followed that up here. In 2013, my theme was Delete. Back in 2010, my theme was to Follow through and finish.

So while last week here on the blog I looked back at 2014, at what worked and what didn’t, today I’m looking forward. The 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever program walks you through the process of looking back and looking forward. Looking back is hard, because you have to face what didn’t go well. It can be depressing if you didn’t succeed at something you really wanted to go well, or if things that were out of your control just went badly in general.

But looking forward, that’s where the big dreaming happens, and you dream the dreams that get you excited and ready to conquer the world. Participating in the Best Year Ever program, I now know how to make those things happen.

So without further ado, here are the 3 words that are going to drive me in 2015.

Inspire. Build. Teach.

All right, so what does that mean?

Inspire

2014 has ended as a pretty crummy year. The news is just horrible, with reports of racial violence all over. We all need some hope. Some peace. Some quiet.

Build

I want to build a business around my art. I want to build myself to be a better husband, father, and artist. I want to build the people around me to be what God made them to be.

Teach

I believe we all know things that others don’t. Things come naturally or are innate in one person that don’t for the next person. And we are obligated to share what we know with those around us. Whatever you have to share with the world, it’s your responsibility to share that. I want to teach people that there is in fact hope and goodness in the world even when you can’t see through the fog.

Let’s sum all that up

In a nutshell, I want to build a business around my art, and I’ll do that by inspiring people with that art and by teaching them how to live a creative, rewarding life.

It’s simple, but it is harder than it sounds. That’s why I have a plan this year, which I will share with you later.

Your turn

What about you? Do you have a theme for 2015? If so, I’d love to hear it. How are you going to make it happen?

Well, it’s the end of the year, and that means it is the perfect time for looking back and assessing the year that has passed. When you’re not spending holiday time with family or sucking down eggnog (whether in latte, alcoholic, or nonalcoholic form — I’m not a fan of it in general), you’re probably reflecting on 2014 as well.

I recorded this at the beginning of the month on my way home from my day job one night. Just some thoughts about 2014 and how my year reflected (or didn’t) the 3 words for 2014 I wrote about at the beginning of the year.

Did you set goals or themes for 2014? How did you do?

Notes:

Some quick notes regarding my voice memo, along with how I did for each word for the year.

Intention – 70%

• Intention is the foundation for everything else, really. Until you form habits that become instinctive, you have to be intentional about what you do. Create habits and you are on your way. It’s about being proactive instead of reactive. I’ve laid a decent groundwork for this this year
• My focus has been mostly on how I spend my time. I largely kicked the Netflix-late-at-night habit. I ran out of things to watch! Plus, the habit of getting up at 4 a.m. to get in the studio makes me unable to stay up late anymore. I’m an old man now, and that’s perfectly OK.
• My Ideal Weekly Schedule experiment has worked really well. HUGE hat tip to Michael Hyatt and Dave Delaney. (Really, go check them out if you haven’t already. Subscribe to their podcasts and blogs.)

Boring – 85%

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” — Gustave Flaubert

• The Ideal Weekly Schedule ties in really well with this, since it’s not fun or exciting to get up and paint at 4 a.m. It’s kind of boring to not stay up and watch silly shows on Netflix. But I’m making myself get in my “chair” and work at being creative, instead of being “creative.” – normcore. – I gave up social media for Lent. It was boring, but not in the right way. Don’t think I’ll do that again. I’ll probably do something more traditional in 2015, like give up a certain food and focus on the spiritual aspects, not just the asceticism.

Listen – 20%

• Listening is the hardest thing for me to do. Probably for any of us, really. We all want to focus on ourselves instead of others.
• Intended to listen to my “tribe,” but I haven’t really gotten a very big tribe yet.
• Learned to “listen” to my canvases. Learning to not impose my own way on my art.
• Also wanted to focus on my inputs, but I’ve largely ignored that. At least I gave up the junk Netflix habit.

One of my biggest takeaways for the year has been to be flexible and be okay with the fact that it may take 11 months (or more!) to reach a goal, but that’s why you write down your goals.

Well, we are about to celebrate Christmas over here, and you’ve got audio to listen to above, so I’ll wrap this up. Next week I hope to have some thoughts for you regarding plans for 2015. I think it’ll be a great year. What about you?

The holidays are over, and we’re all back to the grind. Did you have a good break?

This is that time of year many of us think about what we will be doing differently in the new year. A lot of times, it revolves around things we wish we did last year or things we want to do better. For most people, it involves losing weight, getting fit, or making more money.

If you’re familiar with Chris Brogan, you know chooses three words for each year. I’ve done the same for a couple of years as well. It’s a nice way to provide yourself some sort of structure for the upcoming year. Plus, it’s not so much a resolution or a goal, but a framework for thinking. As Chris says in his latest newsletter:

The concept is simple enough: think of three words that sum up what you want to change or work towards in the coming year. Instead of a goal like “lose weight” or a better goal like “lose 30 pounds in the next year,” you might choose a word like “green” to represent an overall commitment to having more plant-based foods in your life, and to restore your body to a more natural state.

Previous Words

In 2013, I chose the word Delete because it helped me think about ways to minimize clutter in my life. I still have a long way to go, but it may have permanently shaped my thinking, especially in my digital life. I’m less willing to let new things into my life if I think it will only create more noise, and I am not afraid to drop things that aren’t creating value for me.

In 2010, my words were “follow-through” and “finish.” (I’m not sure I had anything for 2011 or 2012. Those years were admittedly less focused.)

My Three Words for 2014

I actually started thinking about my 2014 words of the year around Thanksgiving, maybe earlier. For 2014, I want to focus on 3 words: Intentional, Boring, Listen.

Intentional

I want to be more intentional in how I spend my time and money. My kids won’t be kids for long, and I want to be sure they get time from me that they need. How I spend my time and money is important, too. I can’t waste it and fritter it away on things that don’t give lasting value. So in a way, this is an extension of last year’s “Delete” theme.

Boring

If this one made you laugh, I’m glad! Yeah, it’s a funny one. Who wants to be boring, anyway? Don’t we all want to be interesting? But this for me is more about routine than anything else. It actually piggybacks on being intentional. If I spend my time intentionally, purposefully not staying up late watching Family Guy on Netflix, but instead going to bed early so that I can get up early and write or paint, then I’m being intentional and boring. Boring in the sense that you know exactly what I’ll be doing at that time, because I’m doing hard work instead of hanging out or wasting time. Hustle.

Listen

This one may prove harder than the others since they are easy to automate once you get the habit formed. Listening is something you have to do actively, whether it is with your spouse or business opportunities. What this looks like for me personally is seeking out conferences, magazines, bloggers, and individuals that I can learn from to become a better artist, marketer, and person. It also means taking more time (intentionally) to listen to my wife and children, putting down the iPhone or paintbrush and giving them my undivided attention.

What Are Your Three Words for 2014?

So, do you have three words for the upcoming year? I hope so, so you can have a bigger and better year than 2013. I’d love to hear what you want to do in 2014. Maybe we can encourage each other. What do you say?

One Last Thing

Yesterday, I sent a version of this to my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to see this sort of thing in your inbox, please sign up! Thanks!

Photo Credits: January 2014 Calendar: danielmoyle via Compfight cc Calendar with leaves and herbs and stuff: bubbo.etsy.com via Compfight cc

It’s funny how patterns and themes emerge in your life. This year, I never set out to embrace a theme word or phrase or anything. Rather, it happened almost accidentally. But once I saw the trend, I decided to embrace that direction.

My word for 2013 is “Delete.”

I’m sure you’ve heard of a few people out there in internet-land blogging about their word(s) of the year. It may be one word, three words, or whatever. Chris Brogan has three theme words for each year. In 2010, I had two theme words.

It’s a good idea, since it gives you a theme for your year. It’s a way to act more intentionally.

DELETE.

It’s kind of negative, isn’t it?

At first, maybe. But I think it can be positive. Because when you delete things you don’t need or use, you have more room to breathe, to do things you really want to do. There’s more room for me to be creative and make stuff.

At the end of December and the beginning of January, I unsubscribed from email newsletters that I never read. I unfollowed RSS feeds, Twitter-ers, Facebook friends who never update. Deleted iPhone apps I haven’t used in months. Back in the fall, when the U.S. Presidential Election season was in full swing, I used third-party tools to filter out all the polarizing comments.

Why am I doing this?

IT JUST WASN’T ADDING ANY VALUE TO MY LIFE.

This doesn’t just have to be digital: you can unsubscribe from magazines you never read. Stop hanging out with negative people. Toss clothes you haven’t worn in 2 years. Get rid of clutter in your house.

So, in 2013, I am trying to carefully weigh whether things are adding value to my life. If not, I need to delete them.

Do you have a theme word for the year? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.