Reflecting on 2018's Three Words

It's the time of year when I reflect on my three words for this year, in preparation for setting my new words for 2019.

For anyone new here, this a process I learned from Chris Brogan - I've been doing it for a number of years now. The three words define my intentions for the year, setting a focus rather than specific resolutions.For 2018, my words were Balance, Structure and Grow. So here goes...

Balance

The aim for this word was for me to reclaim my time and the goals I set for myself years ago. This was partially successful, from the second half of the year anyway.

I managed to get time back to read more, get more practice visual facilitating and, most importantly, shifted focus back to this blog and creating things of value for my community.

I've also been able to plan content for next year - which leads nicely into...

Structure

This did not work as well as I would have liked for the vast majority of my work. I did get a much better tracking process in place for client work, but there is so much more left to do.

That's why I finally drove myself to create a content calendar for next year - trying to automate some of this work. I have a few other things planned for the next couple of weeks to start 2019 the right way; fingers crossed I don't get waylaid.

Grow

And now the one I struggled to get enough focus on. While 2018 was definitely a Growth year in many ways, they weren't the ways I had planned.I had stated - confidence, clients, offerings and presence as the focus.

• Confidence gets a tick - my confidence in my professional skills definitely improved. At the same time, the last few months have been shadowed by depression - not a very confident mindset. I can feel myself coming through that at the moment, but it's tiring.

• Clients is a partial tick - I'm definitely getting myself out there a bit more and have some great leads for visual facilitation work in 2019.

• Offerings get a tick - not the one I expected, but there has definitely been growth in this area.

• Presence not so much - not too much to go into here.

Overall

I'm pretty happy with how 2018 turned out in the grand scheme of things. I achieved a significant amount throughout the year, and I feel like I'm in a good place to start 2019.

Could it have been better? Always. But it also could have been a lot worse. Importantly, I'm focusing on self-kindness around all this work because that has been slipping. I've realised this year that I've settled back into being too critical of myself in some areas of my life. I'm hoping to address this with one of my words for 2019 - I'll post them up tomorrow.

For now, Happy New Year and if you do the three words process I would love to know how you went too.