We’re more than halfway through January, which means most New Year’s Resolutions have already quietly laid down and died.
Time to think about 2012
I’m not a fan of resolutions, which imply trying instead of doing. Instead — taking a cue from Bill Gates — I suggest investing a little time looking hard at the prior year, and then charting a way forward in 2012.
Here are three easy questions to ask yourself:
What single thing most hampered your productivity/profitability in 2011?
In 2011, my biggest productivity killer was not a client or software issue, but our child daycare situation. It was unstable, and too often my wife and I found ourselves on the wrong end of an early morning phone call that meant one of us was about to lose a workday.
In three instances it went on for a week — once when I was launching a sizable web project. Sleepless doesn’t begin to cover it.
It needs to be fixed, and it will. And you?
- Did you suffer through a series of boom/bust cycles (alternating between scrambling or sitting)?
- Did some ongoing distraction put a damper on your billable hours?
- Did a process bottleneck jam your writing/creative productivity?
- Are you trying to run a fulltime business on parttime hours?
What are your business numbers really telling you?
Freelancers are notoriously bad at interpreting the numbers, but there’s no better way to know what really happened to your business in 2011.
In my case, the numbers played out about as planned, though a bit too much revenue is coming from one client — cause for concern if you don’t have a rock solid contract. I plan to diversify a little in 2012.
- Did revenue in one segment of your business increase or decrease, and what is that telling you?
- Is too much of your time being chewed up by one client — who isn’t carrying their revenue weight?
- Are you working too far down the payscale, or on too-small projects? (Sub-question: what are you going to do about it?)
What would make your professional life better in 2012?
There’s money and there’s happiness. Ideally, you discover ways to find more of both during 2012.
I’m copping to a two-parter. First, I want to resolve an issue with one client, or simply replace them. It’s not worth the adrenaline.
On a higher level, I’m not writing much and I’m doing very little concept work (both of which I love), and while I’m not diving back into the highly competitive ad world, I am looking for more creative satisfaction in 2012. I’ve got ideas…
Maybe some of these will resonate with you:
- Tied to a client you don’t like? (Hint: get untied)
- Working below your talent level? (Hint: search out clients & projects you want to write)
- Working in a part of the industry that bores you? (Hint: A career involves some staying power; better spend it doing something that interests you.)
- Need to learn some new skills?
If you dig a little, you’ll find the uncomfortable questions you have to ask yourself in order to build a better business in 2012.
Now For The Visionary Part
The above are designed to fix the broken things that are bleeding you of energy, desire or money.
The next step involves something bigger.
Your vision for your own future.
I don’t have pithy bullets for this subject, and I will say this is the hard part.
You need to look ahead a few years and decide what it is you want to be doing. An obvious analogy is construction; pounding nails is fine when you’re 25, but it can be a hard life when you’re 50.
Shouldn’t you own the construction company by then?
Accordingly, what are you doing in 2012 to make 2013 — and all the years after it — better?
Do you need to find better-paying clients/projects/niches? Is it time to wholly overhaul your business, aiming in it a new, more profitable direction?
A Hot Tip
If your answers to the above questions suggest change is in order, don’t trot out the usual fluffy, non-specific resolutions.
“I will be more productive during the day” is not a good goal.
“I will not turn on the TV” or “I will buy Freedom and use it at least four hours every day” are more specific solutions to real problems, and easier to measure.
Finally, be honest and even a little courageous.
This stuff isn’t easy (change never is), but it’s essential if you want to prosper over the course of an entire career.
Even if you love what you do, is there a way to do it for more money? Or a way to find more free time (this is about being happy, not just rich)?
Root around in the reptilian parts of your brain a little, and see what pops up (I’ll bet you already know what needs to be done).
Keep writing in 2012, Tom Chandler
The Letters of Note blog just published his rightly famous “I am a lousy copywriter” letter detailing his twelve step process for writing an ad — something I’d read years ago in a book secretly assembled by Ogilvy’s colleagues without his knowledge (The Unpublished David Ogilvy).
