My Three Words for 2022
One of my favorite exercises each year is carefully selecting my three words for the upcoming year. This is a process that Chris Brogan introduced 16 years ago (I think) and that I’ve been consistently doing since 2008 (14 years! 😮) These three words provide the framework for what my goals will be (broken out into select and achievable categories once I’ve chosen these three themes).
While I would typically publish these on either the final day of the previous year or the first day of the new year, I have spent more time reflecting on them this year. In 2021 my three words were: Perseverance, Wellness, and Recovery. How well did I do with my three words last year?
Perseverance: I feel confident that I achieved this, especially in my professional life. After 225+ applications, I started my new full-time role at Demandbase leading social and influencer marketing on our Content team. What started out initially as a one-person team prior to my VP and I joining has now grown to nearly a 15 person team. I love our company, leadership, team, and what I get to work on. On the personal front, we were fortunate and weren’t handed the endless number of hard times that we had to deal with last year.
Wellness: This fluctuated for me throughout the year. On the physical front, joining GORUCK Tribe and SRT helped me to hit my lowest weight in years. My strength and endurance were at a new level as well. I tracked all of my daily, weekly, and monthly stats such as weight, steps, ruck miles, and other metrics such as that. All of this was during the first half of the year. Where this went sideways was when we decided to move back to CT in July. My diet went downhill and I traded Tribe and SRT for normal weightlifting which caused my weight to creep back up. I didn’t, however, focus on increasing the amount I was reading, listening to podcasts, or taking new free courses.
Recovery: Life began returning to normal before the Omicron variant hit and started to shift the various mandates back and forth depending on what town you were in. I watched as people went from feeling comfortable not wearing masks to an increase in masks pretty much everywhere. We both received our boosters and have been fortunate to not have been directly affected by COVID yet.
With the lookback at 2021, let’s look forward to 2022:
Content: An area that I struggle with is creating content on a consistent and sustainable basis. This is something that I’m determined to change this year. Instead of trying to keep up with the level of publishing that friends or industry colleagues do, I’m going to create content on a schedule that I can maintain consistently. I will test a variety of different forms of content to see if a particular one is more sticky than another but overall consistency is the key.
Focus: If you’ve followed the arc of my personal site here you would notice that my content has been all over the place. It hasn’t been focused. I’ve written about areas that I’m knowledgeable about but I’ll go from writing about fitness to recipes to social media to productivity and other disjointed areas. While this is perfectly okay because it is my website, it doesn’t help those that take the time out of their day to consume what I publish. This needs to be focused on the others that I’m focused on, both personally and professionally. So what are those areas you may ask? It will be strictly social media, influencer marketing, content marketing, and private communities (especially for B2B).
Invest: This word takes on two meanings for me. On the financial front, it means getting back on track with the level at which we invest in our retirement. Ever since I was 28 years old, with the exception of a few months between Citrix and ServiceNow, we have maxed out my 401k. With being out of work for 11 months, even with consulting and contracting work, we missed out on a year of investing in our retirement. We are now back on track with that on multiple fronts. On a more personal front, with a basically last-minute and unplanned move back to CT last July, being able to invest deeper in relationships with family and friends became a focus in the 2nd half of 2021 and will continue to be important this year. Sunday family dinners, random BBQs, holidays, and hanging out with my best friend are just a few ways that help with this.
There you have it. These are my three words for 2022. These aren’t meant to be goals but more guide-rails. To ensure that you stay on track, if you choose to participate, you should check in on these once per quarter or so. I’ve been following along with others who have been posting their three words and hope that you’ll consider developing your own as well.
