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

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

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

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?

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.

What are your thoughts?  How do you create a balance in your life?

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Death is a normal and natural part of life. While we don’t like to think about it often, death is something that each one of us must deal with many times throughout our life. The thought of someone close to us suddenly disappearing from our lives can be crippling. While it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, hopefully, for most of us, those that we lose will be those are in a better place because they’re no longer suffering from a medical ailment and it will be something that we’re expecting and have had an opportunity to plan for. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes we lose people unexpectedly.

While sharing a very personal story about losing a friend unexpectedly, Dan Perez asked:

“What if someone you cared for wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow morning and neither one of you knew it?”

This question alone, never mind the actual story Dan shared, made me flash back to losing my parents.

Finding Out by Reading An Obituary

When I was in middle school my parents divorced. Since it was my step-father who I had grown up with since my earliest memories, I lived with my mom after the divorce. I continued to have a great relationship with my dad and we hung out often.

Following the divorce, my dad remarried and unfortunately his new wife wasn’t so understanding of our relationship, mostly because he was “just” my step-father so after the divorce, he, technically, had no legal ties to me any longer. My dad and his new wife had a child together and this further drove a wedge between my father and I because of marital pressures to spend time with his “real” son.

A couple years had gone by and my father and I had barely talked due to these pressures. Then, one day in October, during my senior year in high school, my mother opened up the local newspaper and as she was flipping through the obituary section, she saw my father’s photo. My dad had passed away from cancer.

I never had a chance to say goodbye.

Saying “I Love You” One Last Time

We’ve all heard that you should always say “I love you” to our loved ones before saying goodbye, whether on the phone, in-person, or virtually. The thought goes that if you were to lose that person, your last words would be “I love you.”

While growing up my mother always suffered from an aggressive form of Lupus. Once my parents divorced it put all of the weight of dealing with my mom’s disease on me. Since my mom couldn’t work and was on disability, it meant that I had to work at a very young age just to support our household. It didn’t always work out and, unfortunately, I know what it’s like to be evicted with a sheriff standing at your door; living in a shelter; and visiting food pantries just to have some powdered milk.

Coming into my junior and senior years of high school my mother had been progressively more sick and was bed-ridden most of the time. No one knew how bad it was though.

On a sunny day in March of my senior year of high school, I was getting ready to leave my house to go hang out with a few friends. My mom and I hadn’t been getting along that well lately because I wanted the freedom that my friends had and, in some ways, regretted having to give up my life to support my mom. I walked out of my house, slamming the front door and there was some unsavory language exchanged between us.

While waiting outside for my friend to arrive, I paused, remembered that my mom and I had made a pact to always say “I love you” before leaving each other, and felt sad that we hadn’t had that last exchange. I walked back inside, said I was sorry and we each said “I love you” before my friend arrived and I headed out for the day.

Those were the last words I ever said to my mom. While I was out that day, her body shut down one organ at a time putting pressure on her heart and she died from a heart attack. I would later find her dead in her bed. She had passed away just five months after losing my dad.

Always Looking Over My Shoulder

It is hard losing someone close to you at any point in your life but losing both of your parents while your in high school can be devastating. It can lead you down dark and lonely paths. You have to make a decision in your life to either head down a path of destruction or to the experience as a driver and motivator to do better in life.

I decided that a path of destruction didn’t sound like much fun and that, instead, I would stand tall and fight through it.

Prior to my mother passing away, she had tried to prep me for it. Besides the many life lessons she tried teaching me, she told me that she would always look over my shoulder. Once I left for college, during my first semester, I got a tattoo on my right shoulder/back area of a blue rose (my mother’s favorite flower) with angel wings, clouds and my mom’s death date. This was my way of ensuring that my mother would always look over my shoulder and help guide me through life.

How That Experience Has Changed Me

From that point forward I have run as hard and as fast as possible for the rest of my life running through any wall that ever presented itself to me. Some have told me that it’s as if I have something to prove. For me, it’s that I never want to feel as though I have disappointed my parents. It is what drives me every day.

Besides deciding to juggle as many plates in the air as humanly possible at all times, the experience of losing my parents changed me in more ways than I can ever express. I’m sure that it has changed me in many ways that I won’t know until I have children, too.

But, what I do know is that it has caused me to appreciate life, live it to its fullest, and also to never end a conversation with a loved one, especially my wife, without saying “I love you.”

Thanks, Dan, for the motivation to write this post. It’s been a long time coming and an experience that I have hinted about and touched on lightly in previous posts but never dived into fully.

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Photo Credit: hugovk

Imagine that you went to pick your children up one day and they weren’t there. Shortly after, you received a phone call threatening that you would never see your children again if you reported them missing. The phone number traces back to Egypt and the male caller spoke with an English accent. You realize that your children have been kidnapped. You suspect they have been taken to Egypt. This suspicion is then confirmed when you find out that their mother (and your ex-wife) used falsified Egyptian passports to kidnap the children and take them thousands and thousands of miles away from your home. In your search to find them you travel that long journey 5 times over the course of a year in hopes of finding any clue that will lead you to be reunited with your children.

Sound like a script for a new movie or book? Sound like your worse possible nightmare?

Unfortunately, it is neither a movie or a book. It is a nightmare but one that is being lived in reality and not in a dream state.

It is the story of the past year for my friend and colleague, Colin Bower.  You can watch Colin talk about his situation in a recent interview that was done with the Boston-based ABC affiliate.

For those wondering why this is the first they’re hearing about it, Colin has worked through the legal system for the past year and chosen not to make his struggle public. There has been a US federal warrant issued for the arrest of Colin’s ex-wife, Mirvat el Nady on charges of kidnapping and there is also an outstanding international Interpol red notice which has been issued. There has been an Egyptian court order also issued ordering Colin the right to visit with his children, Noor, aged 8 and Ramsay, aged 6. There is still much work being done by the US government to help bring Noor and Ramsay home safely. But, now, Colin is turning to the community for help in bringing awareness to the situation.

Are you willing to help raise awareness so that Colin can be reunited with his children? There are multiple ways that you can help bring Noor and Ramsay home:

1. Head over to the Facebook Page that has been set up and “like” the page.
2. Contact the Egyptian government and urge them to help: embassy@egyptembassy.net
3. Create a video, photo, or message and upload to the Facebook Page, YouTube, Vimeo and/or your blog. Tag it “noorramsay” so that it can be found easily.
4. Thank Senator John Kerry for his support thus far: support@johnkerry.com
5. Share the Facebook Page with your friends, family and colleagues encouraging them to also “like” the page and carry it forward.
6. Show your support on Twitter and encourage your network to help Noor and Ramsay by using the hashtag #noorramsay

Thank you for the help and everything you do from here. You have the power to make a difference in this very difficult situation.

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The one gift that we’re all born with is that of choice. Each of us decides, as an individual, what choices we will make. We have influencers and life experiences that may weigh in on those choices but we’re still given the power to make the final decision.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, discusses the difference between gifts and choices during a commencement speech at Princeton University.  During this speech he suggests, as highlighted by Princeton in the description on their YouTube channel, that “one’s character is reflected not in the gifts one is endowed with at birth but rather by the choices one makes over the course of a lifetime.”

You may be quick to jump and say that it is our experiences that make us who we are. I would agree with you. But, it isn’t just the experience that makes us who we are, it is the choices that we made as a result of those experiences that make us who we are and put us into our next situations.

Watch Jeff Bezos’ speech and see what your thoughts are about the difference between gifts and choices.

If you would like a full transcript of the speech, you can grab it from Princeton’s website.

What say you?  Do you think it is the gifts you were born with or the choices you’ve made that define who you are?

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It’s already a couple weeks into the 2nd half of the year. Can you believe it? The first half of the year blew by so fast. Some days felt like they would never end while other entire weeks flew by before coffee could even be poured. It seems that just a few days ago we were all sitting around making our New Year’s resolutions and setting our goals for the upcoming year.

Earlier today I spent a little while going through the goals I set at the beginning of the year. Overall, I’m pretty happy with where I am with my goals for this year. There were a couple setbacks due to being busy at both New Marketing Labs and Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse. However, I was able to check off some and I made action plans on how to attack a few more to get a couple small victories over the next several weeks. I also scheduled myself a reminder to check in and recalibrate again at the end of 3rd quarter.

Now that we’re fast approaching Fall, have you checked in on those goals that you set? How are you doing with them? Are there any that you can check off? Any that you need to recalibrate?

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Photo Credit: angietorres

That’s not a new question, right?  You hear it asked often but have you ever taken time to actually analyze where your drive comes from and why?  Sure, you may be doing the advanced work, but there are always underlying factors that drive us.  It could be achieving success, not wanting to disappoint our family, competitiveness, a need to provide for someone else, or a number of other factors.  You may jump in now and say that it’s a combination of all of those factors.  That’s ok, as long as you have taken the time to truly understand if those are the factors that drive you.

For me, my drive comes from a few different areas however the main source is the need to ensure that I never disappoint my parents.  When I was 17 both of my parents passed away 5 months from one another.  My dad passed away from cancer in October 1999 and my mom passed away from a Lupus-induced heart attack in March 2000.  While the passing of my dad was a shock, we had been dealing with my mother’s illness for most of my life.  It wasn’t a terminal diagnosis but she had an extreme and aggressive form of Lupus that had beaten her up over several years.  My mom had always told me that no matter what happened in life, she would always look over my shoulder.  After my mom passed away I got a tattoo of a blue rose (her favorite flower) with angel wings and her death date on my upper back/shoulder area to ensure that she would always be looking over my shoulder.

Having both of my parents pass away before graduating high school instilled a great fear of disappointing them and it caused me to make a pact with myself that I would never stop.  Never stop what, you might ask?  Never stop anything that I put my mind to no matter how far out of reach it may appear.  Never stop persuing my goals.  Never stop until I could provide the life for my future family that my parents never could (read: I grew up very poor, on food stamps and supplemental help).

Couple this pact that I made along with an unnatural level of competitiveness and being a perfectionist, you’ll start to get a glimpse into what drives me.  It’s not as simple as wanting to be the best or being rich.  A perfect storm of life experiences collided at a young age for me that forced me to take a different perspective on the world in front of me and how I’m going to conquer it.

So, I return to the question I asked at the start of this post: What drives you?

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Photo Credit: Team Dalog