How’s 2012 Treating You?

How’s 2012 treat­ing you so far? Things have been insane­ly busy here. I’ve been hack­ing my job like a boss so far and the out­come is just what I expect­ed: a heap­ing pile of excit­ing, engag­ing work on my plate. Feel real­ly lucky to be doing what I’m doing where I’m doing it. Can’t share too much, but I think many of you out there will be sur­prised by some of the things cook­ing at my day job.

Can’t stress enough to “cre­atives” that work is only as fun as you make it. Do good work and you’ll impress some­one. Phon­ing it in not only makes you mis­er­able, it also means you have noth­ing to show for your misery.

But enough about work. 

I think I’m hold­ing up my end of the bar­gain as far as res­o­lu­tions go. Some have fall­en by the way­side, while I’ve com­plete­ly maxed out things I did­n’t even resolve to do. Typ­i­cal, that.

What makes me hap­pi­est? Con­quer­ing email. Crow­ing about Inbox Zero is sil­ly, but I went through and purged over 4,000 con­ver­sa­tions down to under 400 in about a day. Sounds like a chore, but I can tell you it was a reward­ing expe­ri­ence. Sift­ing through those mes­sages is the clos­est most of us come to leaf­ing through a jour­nal. It’s a cat­a­log of expe­ri­ences, good and bad, jobs got­ten and lost, friends who’ve come and gone, and most impor­tant­ly good insight into how one sees the world. Blew my mind a lit­tle bit. Also makes me won­der why I took so many bad pic­tures of great food along the way!

To cel­e­brate, I bought the Spar­row app with an iTunes card I got for Christ­mas. Real­ly enjoy­ing it so far. Love the Drop­box inte­gra­tion. Smart move!

Real­ly focused on GTD this year. With fam­i­ly and work, there’s nev­er a moment to sit and think about what I’d like to get done. Pri­or­i­ties count. Start­ed play­ing with Wun­derk­it this after­noon and I think it may be the answer to my GTD prayers. It’s the clos­est I think any­one’s got­ten to hav­ing a Swiss Army knife for GTD, with notes, to-do and col­lab­o­ra­tion tools. Real­ly hope it works!

Most dif­fi­cult? Switch­ing banks. We’re about 33% of the way there, hav­ing opened an account and redi­rect­ing our direct deposit. How­ev­er, join­ing a cred­it union has some draw­backs, notably on the account man­age­ment front. While it’s not true of all banks, ours lacks a mobile account man­age­ment app and the online tools are a lit­tle dat­ed. I think we’ll be mak­ing use of Mint.com and Manilla.com for account mon­i­tor­ing and bill­pay. It’s not per­fect, but I think we’ll be much hap­pi­er banking.

2012 has pre­sent­ed some chal­lenges out of the gate, but noth­ing insur­mount­able. Here’s to try­ing to keep it that way! How are you hold­ing up?