HMM: 3 Guiding Words for 2019
By: Simon Grimm
Tags: Developer, Resolutions, Personal Growth, Makers, Goals

I’m not going to lie: I failed miserably on many promises of this blog and the according YouTube Channel in 2018. I’m sorry, we are all humans. But we don’t life in the past, so here’s to a great 2019!

I started this “tradition” last year and wanted to continue it this year again by defining 3 guiding words for the year.

I just looked it up and I followed this idea in 2017 but not last year, wow how time flies by!

So let me repeat the idea: Define 3 words for the next year that guide your actions and decisions. I’m not really aware of who started this but I first saw it on the blog of Paul Minors.

Perhaps you can come up with your 3 words as well, so simply add me to your tweet or tag me on Instagram!

Missed Goals of the last year — any regrets?

Before I dive into my words I want to shortly reflect on the last year. A lot of good things happened, especially that we became a family since the birth of our daughter in September.

But at the same time I failed at 95% of the goals I had for the year. The only thing that I sticked to was my content production. You can see everything that I released on my recently created tool “I am creator” on my own profile: https://iamcreator.io/simongrimm

The truth is, right after new year we found out my wife was pregnant and from that point on, everything else was secondary. Of course this is no excuse to not getting sh*t done, but it took a toll on me.

The good thing about regrets is that you can turn them around to improve what’s next.

I failed because my formulated goals were not accurate, not important enough and not enough aligned with my real life.

Therefore, I don’t regret failing but I’m happy to use this as a lesson for years to come!

My Guiding Words for 2019

So after finishing with your past it’s time to look at the future. I’ve defined about 8 goals for myself, but I also wanted to continue this tradition of 3 words (which is in fact not a tradition as I somehow missed it last year), so here we go!

Habits

Last year I tried to achieve goals like getting blog views to a fixed number, grow members of my Ionic Academy to a specific point or simply lose weight. I failed all of them.

This year, I will therefore focus on the process instead.

Instead of formulating “I want to lose 10kg” say something like “I will eat a healthy low carb dinner each day”.

See how it works?

Because I want to focus on the process, I will establish more healthy habits in my life that will automatically help me to achieve the bigger goals. This counts for both personal and business goals.

Once I’ve established the first set of habits I can stack additional beneficial habits onto them and finally let the score take care of itself (did you read the book though?).

Measure

You know that you should set SMART goals that you can measure, and it’s what I did. I just didn’t measure them through the year. That’s why I don’t really have any evidence how I did in different areas of my business.

This year I’m going to add more formal checks to see how I’m doing:

Weekly Review: See which tasks I finished and spend time on

Monthly Review: Track on which projects I worked the most and adjust my planning

Goal Review: Check in with my defined goals every 3 month and see if they are still important to me

Finance Tracking: List all income and expenses in sheets to better understand my cash flow

Sometimes you can feel like “what did I actually work on?” and that’s how I felt at the end of last year. I was doing a lot of content creation but finally felt like I didn’t do enough.

By reflecting what you did you can pat yourself on the back and be more happy with how you spend your time.

Make

Finally, I’m a content creator and maker by heart. I just love to come up with ideas and make them real. It’s how my blog started, how I created info products, how I build up my membership site and finally how my whole business works.

But somehow along the way last year I lost my vision and spend more time then I should have on consulting. It wasn’t bad in general, and the income was very welcome given the upcoming baby but it took a lot of time away from creating other things.

From doing things I’m better at.

But this year I want to align closer with my true calling again.

I already started becoming more active on Instagram and you should follow me for all the updates and progress on my business.

If you find yourself scrolling through Instagram 90% of the time perhaps take a step back and decide to create something on your own. Put something out there that others can consume! Or as I tell myself, make.

Looking Forward

For some reason I feel super energised for this year. It’s my second full year of being a Solopreneur and I feel like I got the ability to change and adjust a bit after building a foundation over the last years.

Because we all know this fire might change along the year I’ll try to establish the right habits in the first few weeks to set myself up for the best year ever!

So what could be your 3 words?

Let me know below or tag me on Instagram @simongrimm_ !