I have an admission to make - I'm a little addicted to Wordle. It's a quirky little Flash app that lets you create a tag cloud. I've used it for presentations, for seeing what my blog tag cloud looks like, and just for playing about.
Every January first I like to go through an exercise of what matters to me in the coming year and I got the idea to enter those terms into wordle. These words often reflect not only what I want to strive for but also what I've been stuggling to achieve in the prior year.
This year, I unexpectadly have gotten the opportunity to redefine my work life. All of a sudden, those concepts that I put down on paper on January 1st have taken on new meaning. And if I start stringing these concepts together, I come up with the things I really love to do:
Create Exciting Connections
Egage in Listening in order to Create
Inspire Respect for each other
Prioritize in a way to achieve Contentment
Build Excitement and Connections
Practice Placid Excitement (by this I mean excitement witthout drama)
These are all great things by which to guide my decision making when exploring new opportunities. They are not only the qualities that I want to practice, but they are also the qualities I am looking for in a new work environment.
Chris Brogan does something similar that I love - his three words for the year - and takes a little more concrete approach. I find that the things that really matter to me are more environmental or attitudinal. I clearly can't narrow my list down but if I had to pick one word it would be contentment which is actually a pretty loaded word for me because I am driven to create and build and I feel strongly about making sure that work adds value to others...but I also need to make sure I do that in an environment that is energizing. Tough to achieve but it is a great goal.
What matters to you in 2009? Has it changed much from last year? Has the economy changed things for you?
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