Review

The end of the year is usually a period where people would do a review about their personal or business life, in order to:

• analyze what went well.
• analyze what went wrong.
• set new goals for the coming year.

So many things can happen in a year, and as I have my own business, in addition to long-term goals I often ask myself what would be the next steps for me to do in the coming months. Each time, lots of ideas come to my mind—but I need to focus on fewer goals to accomplish because there are only 24 hours in a day and I don’t like to stop in the middle of a project.

My selection criteria to decide if I keep an idea or add it to the list of “things I wish I could do” are based on answers to the following questions:

• Is it a challenging task?
• What are the impacts of the project?
• Is it a good fit with my values?
• What would I learn?
• Will I be motivated to do it?
• Will it affect my happiness?
• Will I have enough time to implement the idea?
• Will it fit to my budget?
• What are the financial impacts?
• Is it feasible?
• What are the results I want to achieve?
• Will it impact the balance between my personal and professional life?

Even though you can answer all those questions once you have an idea in mind, it seems that one difficult and major step is the first one: to start your project. The reasons for that can be various: don’t know where to start, fear, other priorities, etc. As one of my friends told me one day, “They are just excuses.”

Chris Guillebeau: “Live the life you want”

I think we have to find the trigger by ourselves, but there is one book I would like to mention if you want to end the year with an interesting reading: The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. It can give you a “kick” to make concrete the idea you were dreaming about implementing for years.

I was lucky to meet Chris during his book tour when he had a stop in San Francisco. More precisely, I created my luck by canceling a business event I was expecting for months, but both events were in conflict as they were scheduled in two different cities. Everything is a question of priority. My priority was to see how close Chris’s actions were with the ideas of his book. I won’t write about how inspiring the presentation was; otherwise, this post will be too long. But just to give you an idea of the person, he was very approachable. Chris took only few minutes to talk about his experience and his book, and he shared his presentation with other bloggers by inviting them to also present their work. He is not only creating a small army of remarkable people, but he is part of it. I like leaders who lead by example instead of “do as I say but not as I do.”

Chris has kindly allowed me to record few minutes of his speech (See video below.). You will have to meet him to hear more about his mission.