Personal | Justin Levy

Three Words for 2012

January 1, 2012 By Justin Levy 4 Comments

It’s that time of the year again where we look at the new year full of vigor and motivation, ready to take on everything that the upcoming year has to offer. However, it’s so easy to get bogged down and sidetracked from accomplishing our goals that by the time we look up again, the year has already escaped us.

This is why for the past few years I’ve joined Chris Brogan and several other friends in choosing three words that will serve as my guiding pillars for the upcoming year. These three words will help me to accomplish the goals that I have set out for myself, both professionally and personally.

Over the past month I’ve been working on my 2012 plans and getting myself organized and set up for the upcoming year. This past week I sat down with just my notebook and drafted a long list of potential words. There were many that hit the cutting room floor but that will still impact my year.

My three words for 2012 are: Consistency, Balance, & Ship

Consistency

This is actually one of my three words from 2011 that I’m choosing to include again for 2012. It’s an area that I need to continually improve on and will be a key to being able to achieve what I’ve set out for myself this year. I need to remain consistent in my processes and systems that help me to stay productive. I need to remain consistent in my presence and level of engagement on social platforms and in my writing. I want to stay consistent with my fitness and nutrition. 2011 was a big year for me when it came to fitness – I lost 50lbs and dropped 20% body fat. I want to keep that up in 2012 and make even more improvements. One way I’ll be doing this is through a project that I’m working on with a close friend that we’ll be sharing more about soon.

Balance

When you’re workshifting full-time and one of your hobbies and passions is also your career, it creates a double-whammy for throwing balance out of whack. It’s far too easy for the scales to tip too far one way or the other. And I’m not referring to simply a work/life balance between the time spent working at my laptop and the time spent doing anything else but work. There’s a balance of time that needs to happen between time spent writing or engaging on social channels for work versus personal. Sure, these lines are blurred and I accept that but it’s far too easy to work on projects and engage in social channels throughout the day for work and look up and realize it’s been a couple days since I checked in personally.

There are other areas of balance that need to be struck as well such as the balance between developing strategy and executing. If you spend all of your time coming up with new slide decks and preparing reports, it doesn’t leave much time to execute all of those ideas. Some of this throughout 2011 was also the learning curve that happens when you join a new company, especially a large, fast-growing company. There is increased time and energy spent just learning how to navigate the organization, so that has to be accounted for as well.

Ship

The list of projects I want to accomplish in 2012 is long. It’s easy to start all of these projects and mark them as “In Progress” on a spreadsheet. The harder part, and the part that has the most impact, is on shipping these projects. It’s easy to continually tweak and never push the project over the line. This year I will ship more projects, even if they’re not perfect because they never will be perfect.

The next step is go beyond just choosing my three words for 2012 and expand on these three words by turning them into an action plan. I’ve already done some of this through my 2012 planning at work. I know what my projects are, my next actions for those projects and my target delivery dates. That’s what these words were partially born out of. However, this doesn’t take into account the personal projects and goals that I have. So now it’s time to take these words and apply them against those projects and areas of my life that will help me to look back at the end of this year feeling accomplished.

What are your three words?

Photo Credit: paurian

Filed Under: Goals, Personal Tagged With: goals, Personal

Recharging and Disconnecting

February 5, 2011 By Justin Levy 6 Comments

How important is recharging to you? No, I’m not talking about the importance of keeping your gadgets charged. We already know that we should always be charging all of our digital leashes. What I’m talking about is taking downtime away from the constantly connected worlds that we live in and allowing yourself to mentally and physically recharge. Many of us work long hours, often times deep into nights and over weekends. Even when we do get some downtime from the office, such as on the weekends, that time is usually filled with everything else in our lives that demand our attention whether they be household projects, cleaning, errand running, or a number of other to-dos. All of this slowly wears us down, especially if you’re adding a lack of solid sleep, high stress environments, business travel, a lack of exercise or a sound diet to the mix.

Even when we do get an opportunity to take a vacation, we’re usually still very much plugged in and connected though albeit on a slower schedule. When I take weekend getaways or domestic vacations I know I’m guilty of this. I might not spend all day on email, Twitter, Facebook and RSS as I do during a regular workday but I’ll still check in a few times throughout the day. Even if I don’t take action on the emails coming in, I still know what’s going on and therefore may be adding stress into the getaway because of knowing what’s awaiting me when I get home or feeling an urge to deal with the situation while away.

That is why I’ve become an increasing fan of taking sailing vacations over the past few years. Two years ago I went on my first sailing trip down to the British Virgin Islands. Not only was it an amazing vacation but I was completely disconnected from the world for 10 days. Not just from my connected world but from everything. And guess what? Everything was just fine. It took about a week to get back into the saddle and caught up but it was well worth it. When I came back I was incredibly productivie because I felt clear-headed and organized. I had just come back from over a week of spending nights laying under the stars letting my mind wonder about anything and everything.

In between leaving New Marketing Labs and before starting at Citrix Online my family took another sailing trip, this time to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with a couple days on the way back in Barbados. It was the perfect opportunity to disconnect from everything and spend quality time with my family. It was one of the first times, if not the only time, so far in my career where I went away on a vacation without a corporate email account. Granted, I do have my personal email accounts and my Caminito email account, all of which receive a lot of emails on a daily basis but still not anywhere on the level of NML or now, Citrix Online. It was an absolutely incredible trip filled with laughter, swimming with turtles, hiking expeditions, exploration and everything that involved not being connected.

Since returning from vacation I have been thinking more about recharging and how important it needs to be in all of our lives. Sure, recharging won’t always be taking a sailing trip around remote islands, but it doesn’t have to be. Recharging could be taking a date night once per week with your spouse where you’re completely disconnected and ban the talk of bills, honey-do projects or any of the other stresses in your personal and professional lives. No matter how you do it, we all need to take time to recharge.

How are you finding ways to recharge?

Oh and if you wanted to see photos from my sailing trip, check out the below slideshow:

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Photo Credit: killermonkeys

Filed Under: Personal, Productivity Tagged With: Disconnecting, Personal, Productivity, Recharging

The Next Chapter: Joining Citrix Online

January 4, 2011 By Justin Levy 61 Comments

A little more than 2 years ago Chris Brogan and I were both attending the first Social Media Jungle event in New York so we decided to carpool down together. During those 5 hours or so of driving and over a dinner at a Chili’s in Middletown, CT later that night, we talked about a new project that he was launching. He was getting ready to unveil New Marketing Labs to the world and was close to signing the first contract which was going to be with Citrix Online (the folks who make GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and other similar products). That night we talked about what we thought the future of business looked like, their use of social media and how NML could be helpful. After more conversations and brainstorming, often in the middle of the night over DM, we set sail, launched NML and I relocated to the Boston area. A couple days after the launch we found ourselves on an airplane headed out to CES to tell anyone who would listen that we were there to be helpful.

Since that trip 2 years ago we have had the opportunity to work with some great companies on amazing projects. In between launching new projects for our clients, we continued to grow the Inbound Marketing Summit, launched Red Pin Marketing and The Pulse Network. There are also some really exciting projects on the cusp of launching over the coming days and weeks that I can’t wait to see after working through them for the past several months with the team.

However, as they prepare to announce these launches, I will be cheering them on instead of on the front lines. I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the team at Citrix Online as part of the corporate communications team and will be overseeing social communications.

Over the past 2 years I’ve worked closely with the folks over at Citrix including Bernardo De Albergaria, David Baeza, Lisa Horner and many others. They are among one of the brightest and most forward thinking teams that I’ve met and had the opportunity to work with. I start with Citrix Online on January 17th, a mere few hours after I return from sailing around the Grenadines. I’m looking forward to the challenges that I know are awaiting me when I get there and am really excited for what 2011 holds in store.

It’s an interesting intersection of passions for me because it combines my experiences in social media, marketing and communications along with my interests and continued research into productivity, time management and workshifting, all things which the Citrix Online products assist with. I’m looking forward to continuing to explore all of these areas, including my role leading up social communications, in more depth in the coming year. Throughout the year I’ll be covering a lot of this in my free newsletter (have you signed up yet?).

With the new job comes a new place to explore. Within the next couple months Laura and I will be packing up the dog, cat, putting the car on a trailer and driving a moving truck across the country to our new home, San Francisco. We’ll trade our view of the Prudential Center for the Golden Gate Bridge and for a whole new set of experiences filled with exploration.

I can’t thank Chris and the entire team at NML enough for the past 2 years. I’ve grown professionally and personally because of the great people that comprise the NML team. Now I’m going to use those experiences and growth to help me be achieve success as I start the next chapter of my career with Citrix Online.

And don’t worry, my allegiance to the Boston Celtics, Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots will not change. Heh.

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Photo Credit: Amanda Breann

Filed Under: Announcements, Miscellaneous, Personal Tagged With: Announcements, Miscellaneous, Personal

My 3 Words for 2011

January 1, 2011 By Justin Levy 3 Comments

Over the past week I have been working on my goals for 2011. These goals include a mix of personal and professional challenges, including financial, fitness, blogging, and project goals. For each of these goals I have defined the steps to achieve that goal (e.g. to pay off a debt during 2011, I must make a specific payment each month) and then what the next action is to achieve that goal (e.g. set up an automatic payment so it is “set it and forget it”).

Each of these goals are tangible and within reach but they will be challenging and will push me to stay focused on achieving them. As part of this, with inspiration from Chris Brogan, I set 3 words for the year that will serve as my navigational system. I don’t set my 3 words first then goals second. Instead, I set my goals and next action steps. I then step away and look at the list objectively to see what the consistent themes are throughout all of the goals. After defining my 3 words I then go back through my goals to see where I need to add, remove, trim or make more specific.

Here are my 3 words for 2011:

Consistency, Growth, and Create

Consistency – Throughout 2010, and for that matter, much of 2009, consistency has been hard for me. With the growth of New Marketing Labs and Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, remaining consistent has been a challenge. While I’m always producing content and consuming information, if you look in between the threads, you’ll notice that it tends to come in waves. For example, I’ll blog daily for 3 weeks and then not publish another post for 4 weeks after that. This is almost always certainly because I’ve gone heads down in a project and that I devote all of my attention to and then when I come back up for air, I realize that it’s been 4 weeks already. This doesn’t just apply to my blog, though it is the primary reason for me choosing this word, it also applies to projects at Caminito, fitness and several other areas. I want to make to build in consistency to areas of my life whether that includes better scheduling of posts, simplifying and streamlining the number of projects I’m working on.

Growth – Growing will be a major part of 2011. I want to grow and expand as a speaker, writer, content producer, business owner and team member. I have growth goals financially, for my blog, for my soon-to-be launched (finally!) personal newsletter (you can subscribe here), my restaurant, the next edition of my book and for other projects that I’ll be sharing with you soon.

Create – In order to to build more consistency into and grow many of my projects, it will include the creation of more content. It will involve creating teams and opportunities and relationships that will lead to new opportunities. To achieve some of my personal goals it will include creating new revenue streams and creating time in my schedule to spend more time wife and friends.

So there we have it. Those are my 3 words for 2011. Throughout the year I’ll check in on these 3 words regularly and assess how I’m doing with them and how they’re assisting me in achieving my goals.

What are your 3 words for 2011?

Filed Under: Motivation, Personal Tagged With: 3 words, goals, Motivation, Personal

Being a Big Deal Isn’t Such a Big Deal

November 13, 2010 By Justin Levy 7 Comments

When I talk to my family, friends, colleagues or community and ask them how they’re doing, usually they respond with some variation on being too busy, tired and in need of a vacation. This is because we have been trained to run as hard as possible to stay competitive. For many of us, we live our lives online which exacerbates this because of the never ending firehouse of information and feeling that we need to keep up. We’re taught to focus on achieving our next accomplishment. We’re taught to never be satisfied and to just keep going.

When you step back though, you realize that being a big deal (however that is defined for you) might not be such a big deal. Is becoming the top expert in your industry worth it if you end up divorced because of it? Is being a Twitter celebrity as cool as it seems if you lose your day job because you spend so much time on Twitter? How about if you end up in the hospital because you haven’t focused on your health while pursuing becoming a big deal?

In this incredibly powerful TEDx speech, Scott Stratten uses personal life experiences to explore this in-depth. This is a “must-watch” speech and one that I have shared with anyone that will listen.