Welcome to 2024!
Our family celebrated New Year’s Eve the same way we usually do…
Gathering with a bunch of friends and their children at a holiday home up north.
Even with the atrocious weather this year… everyone had a blast catching up.
The children especially loved getting out on the water on jet skis and the catamaran.
(Fortunately we have friends who bring their “toys” along 😄).
We worked out it’s been over 20 years since we started meeting together for New Year’s.
It started with some of us as the “young marrieds” group at our church.
We would meet regularly during the year. Then at the end of the year just had a modest New Year’s Eve party in one of our homes.
Not a sproglet in sight.
Then Vicki and I set the ball rolling. Soon kids outnumbered the adults.
Fast forward to today:
We’re now back to more adults than children. Because some, like ours, are young adults and heading overseas and doing other things.
It’s been quite the journey together.
There’s only 3 of us couples from the “early days”. Although everyone else from the other 5 families have been going for at least the last 8 years.
And we’re no longer all living in the same city. Work has taken some of us to various parts of the country.
But we all have our reasons to be within an hour or so’s drive from our current end-of-year meeting place. So we all make it work.
It’s really become one of our yearly rituals.
And not one that any one of us would willingly miss.
So this got me thinking about the rituals I’ve got going in my freelancing business.
Of COURSE it did…
This is the mad dude writing this email who’s still thinking about freelancing business stuff while he’s on holiday.
And protests to his wife that this helps him “relax”… seem to fall on deaf ears…
Err… so…
I got to thinking… there’s plenty of things I do in my business… that you could reasonably call “rituals”.
From how I start my day. To the order I like checking social media in.
But while I’m in this reflective beginning of the year mood…
I’m particularly wondering what are the ones that I would never want to give up?
Or to dice things another way:
What are things I’m doing in my business that I can just dump in the trash like last week’s mouldy bread?
I’ll tell you now…
Daily email ISN’T one of them.
(“And there was much rejoicing.” *)
But giving attention to too many things is.
Like I said in yesterday’s email… my word for this quarter is “focus”.
One thing I’m doing right now to aid this… which might sound strange… is I’m reading a few books, fairly quickly.
I have a large backlog. And my strategy is to read them (!). Then decide if I want to read them again because I want to mine their depths.
If I do… they’ll become part of my “read another 9 times this year and study carefully” pile.
Part of my focus is about going deep. And I’m starting on day one.
Before I head off… I do want to say thanks for reading along with these daily emails.
I appreciate when you reply and share your own reflections.
And, perhaps to help you out at the start of a new year…
When you might also want to make some changes to help your focus…
If you need to hit “unsubscribe” because you’re reading this 2 weeks after the start of the year… after thinking you should probably catch up on all that email that’s accumulating in a folder…
Then let me help you out… go right ahead and unsubscribe.
You’ll have one less thing to think about.
(You’re welcome! 😁)
I won’t be offended. You need to look after you… and do what works to succeed in your freelancing business.
But if you like having my emails turn up in your inbox. Awesome! … we’ve got some great things happening this year.
And — as always — the more the merrier on this ride 🚂
Have a great start to the year!
* If you know where the quote’s from without Googling… then we have much to talk about…
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Chris Milham