“I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” – Helen Keller
It’s the beginning of a whole new year and an entirely new decade. What do you want to be saying on Dec. 31, 2019? My wish for you is that you won’t be looking back with regret. Personally, 10 years from now I intend to be looking back on a decade of surprising breakthroughs and unprecedented progress towards becoming the kind of leader I admire and the kind of human being I aspire to be. And I sure don’t want the people of this Earth to be facing the same problems then that we’re facing now in this world. (Nope! Let’s have new and more exciting problems to tackle in 2020!)
To achieve goals you gotta have goals. If you never have a dream, you’ll never have a dream come true. I recently reviewed a list of my wild and outrageous dreams and goals that I’ve been keeping and updating since 1999 (Not a written list – a spreadsheet, of course – very modern. Maybe I’ll switch to a wiki this year.) When I wrote those goals they seemed anywhere from unreasonable to absolutely ridiculous. For instance, an easy goal would be to try submitting an efile next year instead of a traditional paper tax form. An absolutely ridiculous goal might be to travel to 3 continents in one year.Most of them have happened. The only reason MORE of them haven’t happened is because, when I realized that even preposterous dreams were coming true, I started stretching to even new heights of preposterousness.
I invite you to write your own list of intentions and commitments for the coming decade. Be sure to include yourself, your career, your family and friends, your community, and the world. Intention + Commitment = Action, and Action leads to RESULTS. Some of the outrageous results that manifested in 2009 are getting my “Scrappy Project Management” book translated into Japanese and published by the #1 Japanese business book publisher in Japan, Nikkei Business Press, Releasing the second book in the Scrappy Guides(R) series, helping to found the Open Kilowatt Institute, and expanding my work with ALC Education with global Japanese companies.
Since what seemed impossible was merely difficult, and ultimately inevitable, I have decided to take my goals for the world to a whole new realm of absurdity. Here they are. Obviously I’m not doing this alone, so feel free to join me! If each of us just made a small positive difference in even one of these areas our world would be transformed for the better.
My commitment is to contribute meaningfully to making available to all people of the earth (easily and afford-ably):
#1 – Clean water
#2 – Healthy food
#3 – Sanitary toilet facilities
#4 – Decent healthcare
#5 – Enlivening, high quality education
#6 – Safe, comfortable shelter
#7 – Green, sustainable power
I intend to take action and make a positive difference in each of these areas in the coming decade. But, I’m leaving two items off of my list because I feel that they are too big for me to even think about:
– Sustainable and responsible population practices worldwide
– High integrity political leadership worldwide
Maybe you can tackle those areas. I think the first 6 will keep me kinda busy anyhow. Looking forward to a decade of playfulness, creativity, breakthroughs and transformation.
Scrappy New Year! Enjoy the Ride! Wahoo! – Kimberly
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Happy new year and I really liked all of your 7 resolutions! And Open Kilowatt Institute, to make a zero-emission homes. 🙂