Taking a well deserved break from drafting some brilliant business proposals for the coming year, I found this perfectly timed bit of advice in what may be Seth Godin's final post of 2007 (no worries, he'll be back in 2008). Read it slowly so it has time to set in:

"It's always possible to find a reason to stay put, to skip an opportunity, or to decline an offer. And yet, in retrospect, it's hard to remember why we said no and easy to wish that we had said yes.

"The thing is, we still live in a world that's filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity -- we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

"Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times.

"So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That's why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

"You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment -- just one second -- to decide.

"Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. (Well... maybe, but why mess with a good thing?)

It's difficult to break away from the rhythm of your workplace - putting out fires, attending meetings, sending emails, joining conference calls, managing projects, reporting to your boss, analyzing numbers, forecasting, putting together powerpoint presentations, etc. but that necessary routine will absolutely KILL your ability to grow your business and take it down exciting and profitable new roads if you let it.

As you take the next few days to put together an action plan for 2008, add this to your list: Every single day, find a way to unplug for at least 30 minutes. This isn't lunch or smoke breaks. This is time for you to distance yourself from phone calls, emails, meetings, and all of the other distractions that work to keep you stuck in reactive mode.

Find a way to do it. Schedule it if you have to, reserve a conference room, go hijack an empty office or head down to the coffee shop across the street, or just go hang out on the roof of your building or whatever, but do it. Grab a notebook, a pad of paper (or better yet, your shiny new handy-dandy tablet PC) and go jot down your next masterplan.

Do this EVERY SINGLE DAY in 2008.

This is how you get unstuck.

This is how you don't end up wondering why half of the ideas you had a year earlier never came to be. Put time on your side: Make imagineering time part of your daily routine.

Have a great last weekend of 2007, everyone. ;)


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photo by the impossibly talented and creative Matt Armendariz

Labels: ideas, ideation, imagineering, leadership, planning, setting goals, strategy