What do you think? Willing to try?

12 Things to Stop Doing in 2009

1. Stop writing about Twitter. (See also)
2. Stop writing “inside baseball” posts.
3. Stop putting yourself down.
4. Stop waiting for something to come that will make everything better (if only).
5. Stop thinking you can read minds.
6. Stop trying to do it all yourself.
7. Stop trying old things in new places, unless they’re really old.
8. Stop making excuses for not doing things to move your career ahead.
9. Stop presuming everything will get better because someone else will fix it.
10. Stop writing “me too” posts, or doing “me too” work. Build on the body of work.
11. Stop beating yourself up when you don’t create something on a given day.
12. Stop striving for perfection, and strive for execution instead.

Here’s the Secret

The secret is this: it’s ridiculously hard to focus on STOPPING anything. Think about the beginning of the post. How do we print up tee shirts and rally around “No ____.” It’s just not nearly as cool as getting behind something you want to support. So maybe let’s you and me throw out the first list (don’t tell people who skim blog posts, and maybe they’ll just stop those 12 things), and let’s do some new things in 2009. Cool? And because it’s hard to actually remember 12 things, let’s just do 6 things in the to do list.

6 Things to Do in 2009

1. Find a new way to improve someone’s day (and determine if there’s value in it).
2. Synthesize new ideas from outside your audience’s circle (and help us make meaning from them).
3. Promote the great people out there ( and and keep doing it).
4. Learn from brilliant people (and share what you learn).
5. Work on interesting projects that matter to you (and empower others to participate).
6. Discover your passions (and share them openly).

What do you think? Does any of it grab you? Am I full of it? What’s your take?

Photo credit, rightee