The last week of the old year and the first week of a new year are my busiest weeks of the entire year.
I consider this a good thing.
It’s not so much a business thing (though stuff is often crazy busy with people spending Christmas money, or finally doing something for themselves after making it through a season filled with the expectation of perfection and social obligations, which I totally understand…), as a personal one. This is the week I clean up all the OLD year stuff, take some stock of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and get set to launch off into the NEW year with a whole lot more direction.
No matter where it is that I think I’ll be at the end of a calendar year, I always find myself in new and uncharted territory. Again, I consider this a good thing. It means I’m taking risks, venturing out from the safe and the comfortable, and trying new things. (It also means I make mistakes, sometimes spectacularly big mistakes, but if you’re going to sin, sin boldly. As Mark Twain said, Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. It’s all a learning experience, this life.)
People have asked me from time to time what I do to prepare for stuff like this — a new launch, a new project, a new year. And I wish I had some deep and meaningful insight that would set the productivity world on its ear, but really…what I do is pretty simple. It’s just a more in-depth version of what I do pretty routinely throughout the rest of the year, on a grander scale maybe. But for those who asked:
First, I sit down with a notebook and a pen. Or the laptop and the iphone, now that that’s an option. (Secret: I still use the notebook and pen, too. There’s something kind of tactile about it, and I tend to remember things I write down, rather than type. I type it, too, since all my to-do lists are digital, but for that initial brainstorm, I keep a notebook there, too.) I make a list of all the stuff that isn’t finished from the previous year. I also make a separate list, which I keep on Evernote, of things I DID finish, because sometimes, that’s a harder list to make. (I tend to finish something and then forget it, which isn’t really patting myself on the back for it, which makes that whole going forward thing harder sometimes. If you don’t know what you’re capable of, you can’t reach further, blah blah blah.)
Once I have the projects in a list, I start in with the to-do lists. What needs to be done and in what order? Who’s helping with it? Who do I need to check in with? What’s been done and where is it located? All those kinds of questions. Again, it’s a big picture kind of thing. You have to know where you are in order to know where you’re going.
Once the specifics are done, I can set aside the practicals. I start looking at the past year and figuring out what I did right and what I could have done better, and what was an unmitigated disaster. (And there are always some of those. It’s relative — I didn’t blow up any buildings or run over any puppies, but there’s always something that needed a different kind of attention.) I try to figure out what the year was trying to teach me. I think that’s kind of important.
So, armed with the new list and timeline (I put it all into Things, a program I talked about on the old blog, I think. It’s got a synch-thingie with the iphone and it means I always have my STUFF with me. Makes me very happy. And never bored. As if that’s an issue.), I start organizing. Things (not the program) tend to get disorganized if you’re not on top of them, and I tend to forget things sometimes. So I do all the year-end stuff now — accounting and organizing all of the completed project stuff into folders, and clearing out all the crap that accumulates on the hard drive and making new 2010 folders for the stuff that *will* accumulate next year.
I do a little organizing physically, too. Not as much as I do a little later in the year, when I’ll know what I need to access on a regular basis, but just the basic kind of clean-out. Get rid of things that no longer apply, or aren’t useful, or are from activities we’ve abandoned for one reason or another. Take an inventory of things like boxes and bags and tissue paper and yarn — see what I’m low on and add those to a list. That kind of thing.
Once all that’s done, it is a MAD DASH SPRINT to get AS MANY THINGS on that “unfinished” list done as HUMANLY POSSIBLE.
No, really.
You wanna see some kind of whirlwind? Come to my house between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It. Is. Insane. I barely sleep, there’s take-out in the fridge, and a giant list on the wall over my office desk with things checked off in red.
I generally think that the fewer things you drag over into the new year, the better. It’s like capping off the old year with a hefty dose of success, and to me, that’s a good way to start in on the new calendar. So I get a little crazy. (Er. A little craziER than usual, at least.) But it means that all those things that have one or two small little details to take care of are DONE, and I can start 2010 with a schedule un-bogged-down with the last vestiges of old projects.
Which is what I’m doing now. I’m taking a break at the moment, but this morning, six projects got completed. Or at least parts of them did. Parts that have been sitting on the to-do list, waiting for attention, and now…I freed up the mental space to focus even better on the other parts that need more attention. It’s amazing how well it works.
Oh, and one other thing — I always try to answer every blessed email in my inbox (or do whatever it is that the email was sitting there reminding me of…) on New Year’s Eve day. Inbox zero for the new year, baybee! Ahem.
(Does it mean I’m a total geek that I get into this stuff so much? Don’t answer that. I know, I know.)
