He who operates with the longest time horizon wins. Did you know that? They say Bill Gates can see out Five Years or so accurately to his strategy, and that he executes against it well. People in business talk about five year strategies and you should be afraid, because that’s far too long a time-span in today’s tech-energized world. But truly, when you look at YOUR time horizon, how long is it?
Near as I can tell, mine’s not as long as it should be. I’m in a little cycle of letting life live me. The more I examine myself, the more I realize I’m letting all these various points of life just wash over me, without giving them much personal thought.
Thanks for the nice comments on the other post by the way. It’s always nice to hear from friends.
Six Planning Streams
Covey would call these “Roles & Goals.” It’s when you figure out the different ways you view yourself, your interactions with the rest of the world, and then set specific goals to them. In my case, I just picked six focuses, and decided to set streams in action. Think of streams as… hmm.. in my vernacular, I’m thinking of this as like little streams of water, and when I set a paper boat in the stream, I can only set it in once, and I can only go in one direction. The trick is, which streams to watch, and what to do with the boats.
So, here are my streams. And after them, I’ll sketch out what I’m thinking, though I won’t share the concrete goals that I’ll write for myself.
- Family
- Work
- Self (health/fitness)
- Community
- Creativity
- Finances
Family
Of these, family has some significant challenges that I won’t chronicle here, but they just involve making the most out of every day. Since taking this job, and building my travel up, I’ve truly appreciated my family more. I spend MUCH better personal time with them now. This set of goals is private.
Work
Work will probably see the most calories in the case of blogging. Family first, but work is where I spend a lot of conscious energy. I’ve got *all* kinds I could write about here. And my goals do seem to have some depth of time horizon here. But there’s an overlay to this about how far I want to push things, how much I want to build out work. I’m in this unique position, and there’s what my boss wants done, but there’s what I feel *I* want to accomplish. I’m going to build out my goals, and see how this works for my boss. We’ll figure out the middles.
One sure goal: I want Video on the Net to be HUGE this spring, and I want Network2 to be a household name among video watching folks.
Self (Health/Fitness)
For health and fitness, I’ve totally let myself drop from my physical best in January of 2005. Yes, I had an injury. Yes, I let 80 work weeks get in the way. But it’s been almost 2 years since then. I think the excuses have run out. So, I’ve got some fitness and health goals I’ll start on tomorrow. (I love starting on random days and not a Monday, and not a first of the month). These will hopefully gain a little more prominence as they further define me.
Community
Ah community. I’ve got lots of PodCamps to attend, participate in, and develop. I want to work even closer with Chris and Bryan and Steve to better develop the “framework” of what we’re doing, to maybe finally form that Foundation we’ve discussed. I want some way to ensure that people are getting the opportunity to experience what we all got in Boston.
I will be rolling out a new for-pay event with Christopher S. Penn in March called “Make My Own TV,” which will be targeted towards traditional media types and new media adopters looking to better understand and develop their skills, abilities, and prospects with new media and video tools. That will be a great experience to me, because it will bridge the ground between our grassroots efforts in PodCamp and the higher-end conference of Video on the Net. Make My Own TV is that middle ground that people can afford to attend, but that provide definite deliverables.
I’ll also be working with Jeff to roll out more Pulver.com/Network2 social events, and we’ve got five planned before St. Patrick’s Day, if that gives you a sense of that craziness.
Finally in community, I’ll be further dedicating Small Boxes and my work with Grasshopper New Media to the pursuit of growing community use of video and new media tools to tell people’s stories digitally, and extend the conversation into the new media space.
There’s even more to community, but I’ll add to that later.
Creativity
This is easy to do. I’m just looking to push myself more creatively. I’ve threatened to write a book on and off for a while. If I don’t write something completely in 2007, I’ll stop telling people that I write. I’m actually leaning on doing two books: one fiction and one non-fiction, just to say I’ve finished both. More on that some other time, but you’ll see LOTS of video examples of my creativity as well, and maybe even a little bit of music.
Finances
I’ve had really messy finances for far too long. I’m getting paid a decent salary. I’ve got most of my crap in order. I think it’s about time I get this put together just right. So, I’m not going to share the details, but I’m starting this weekend to try and get all the money stuff in order, so that I’m not the poorest well-paid guy I know. (We’ll see). I’m kinda tired of being in the 110% club, to be honest, and I’d like to not wince whenever I swipe a credit card, or hell, my debit card. Of all these, I’ll have to take an active effort here, but I think that all the other ducks will help this goal line up.
Wrapping Up
And that’s it. After a day of really wracking my brain, I’m off and running. I’m using a really nice online free tool called Thinkature to better brainstorm the DETAILS of all this, and I won’t share tons about the guts of the goals here, but suffice to say that I feel like I’ve got the starts of the next level that I need.
Jon was right. I need a bigger palace.