I lied. (Not fair, I know.)
Do you have 29 more minutes?
I know. There aren’t too many hours left in 2012, so you’re choosing how you spend your time wisely.
It’s for a worthy cause.
Don’t you want to know what a great year you had? 
Wouldn’t it be nice to wind up your year on a high note, knowing you’re ready to kick off the New Year with gusto?
I could’ve created some drawn out, convoluted worksheet and methodology for assessing how your 2012 went and what you want to accomplish in 2013. But why reinvent the wheel?
Celebrate the wins!
Now that Mr. Franklin and I have reminded you of the consequences of failing to plan adequately, I give you the good news that the best part of planning is celebrating what already went well – went according to plan. That’s where Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul) comes into the picture: In Jack’s Celebrate Your Year post, he provides a fabulous list of questions (starting with ‘What wins did you have?’) for you to answer in 30 minutes about your past year and ideas for next year.
The best part is setting your egg timer for 30 minutes. In that short time take a quick look back at what you accomplished this past year. If a few things were missed, you can decide if they’re worthy of being bumped to a front burner for 2013 or discarded altogether.
In no time you’ll have an outline for where to go with your life and business in 2013.
License to go crazy
Of course, I don’t mean that literally. But when your imaginative juices start flowing about what you want out of your life (and particularly the next year), now’s not the time to judge, edit or evaluate the wild ideas bouncing around your head.
If you took a crack at Jack’s 23 Questions to Inventory Your Successes above, you probably finished with an array of fresh ideas in your head for next year’s goals and accomplishments. In Ridiculous is the new remarkable, Seth Godin posits that it is now completely possible that an outrageous idea, a so-far-outside-of-the-box-it’s-crazy idea may be the thing that succeeds in today’s market. It may be just what is needed as we slide over the fiscal cliff into a New Year.
Here’s to your happiness and success in 2013!
