New Year's Evolution

2013 was an awesome year for me. I achieved greatly in my personal life: I won my work talent show as well as numerous other competitions; my career went from strength to strength based on my focus on self development through reading relevant marketing books as well as listening to podcasts; I was able to spend a month in New York City being exposed to great minds in the marketing industry and experiencing the centre of the world, and ultimately, the continued growth and development of my personal relationships with my girlfriend, my family, my colleagues and my friends truly is what has kept me totally grounded and focused.

2014 is "the year of manifestation" for some. For me, its the year of evolution. Extremely fast tracked evolution. I want to grow faster then ever both personally and professionally. I want to develop my mind, my skills, my talents in a way that will enable these things to deliver huge, unexpected returns. 2013 has put me on the right track, 2014 is the year of taking it to the next level. 

I have established 4 focus areas that I want to explore this year:

1) Productivity & Organisation

One of my largest personal challenges has been my scatterbrained / ADD approach to work and life. I have over time become too comfortable with living in a mess both at home and at work. I procrastinate, i spend too much time wasting time online, and i drop the ball way too often on the small things. Last year, thanks to some smart podcast choices, I learned about Evernote as a solution for note-taking, and it has already become invaluable to me at work. I have begun to use a to-do list app to ensure that small tasks do not fall off the table. This year, I plan become more conscientious about cleaning my living space and ensuring that it is all looking good. I want to look after my valuables and clothes far more diligently to ensure that everything is in place. I want to discover and unearth more tools that will support me in this quest and reach an ultimate level of productiveness.

2) Content Creation & Consumption

I used to be a far more avid writer than I am today, and I honestly believe that my natural aptitude for writing needs to be explored. I currently have two blogs for content: this one, and Danny Digs Flicks, my movie review blog. My primary goal for the year is to write a short e-book, the topic of which is still unclear. I have also had thoughts around starting my own podcast so we'll see what happens. I also want to ensure that I am reading relevant books and articles constantly and consistently, and continuing to listen to podcasts. My thoughts is that if I begin to write and curate good content that my reputation and popularity will only increase more greatly, and hopefully this can yield strong rewards.

3) Health and Fitness

I'm not an unfit human being. I play soccer at most twice a week. I eat relatively healthily. I do feel that I could do better and could shed a bit of weight. So this year I'm gonna aim to get back to peak fitness through a combination of gym and football, as well as other relevant exercises. I may need an accountability buddy to make it happen as I find it hard to be self motivated to wake up early in the morning to exercise. I need to ensure that gym/exercise is integrated deeply into my weekly routine, and really make it work in 2014. I also want to focus on being more careful around maintaining a good diet, and what this means is more cooking of more yummy food on my own, as opposed to eating out too often, which is what I've been doing.

4) Music

For the past two and a half years, I've been learning to sing and play guitar, and I only want to keep improving. So this year, I'm going to dedicate more time to rehearsing and practicing by integrating this into my daily ritual.  I'm going to write a song, and publish it online. I'm going to be more confident about sharing my singing/guitar videos online like this one. I'm going to invite more friends to hear me sing. and maybe, just maybe, I'll join a band. Let's see what happens.

So those are my plans for evolution. I'm confident 2014 will be a banner year for me, and I'm sure it will be as successful for you as well. Thanks for reading.