Interlude: Alignment, Productivity, and Becoming Boards

Happy New Year!

Do you set New Year’s resolutions?

I stopped setting New Year’s resolutions many years ago. Like most people, I tended to abandon my resolutions within a week or two of the new year. In fact, today is widely known as Quitter's Day.

For the past few years, I've taken a different approach. Rather than set a resolution, I choose a word to set my intention for the year. This year, my word is "align."

Why?

One of my greatest values is to serve, which means I often say "yes" to more things that I can realistically take on. And last year, I took on too much.

Sometimes I found the challenges exciting and invigorating. Other times, those challenges led to overwhelm and mistakes.

This year, I'm transforming those mistakes into "missed-takes" (a perspective I learned from Matt Abrahams in the book Think Faster, Talk Smarter). I'm taking the lessons I learned and realigning my focus and energy so that I can serve better.

Do you have a word of the year? Hit reply and let me know.

Now onto the first round-up of 2025...

💌 Round-up

💻 From My Desk

5 Helpful Books to Boost Your Writing Productivity​
To maximize our productivity, we often focus on time management. But productivity is less about time management and more about attention management. These five books will help you develop strategies to manage your attention and maximize your writing productivity.

👓 Reading

10 Essential Tips To Stay Focused and Motivated Throughout The New Year​
This article shares some great strategies to stay focused and motivated to achieve your goals: have a compelling “why"; set SMART goals; celebrate your wins; try something new; have a plan, but be flexible; don’t go it alone; be consistent, not perfect; visualize the results; seek positivity; and go easy on yourself.

🖥️ Watching

A New Way to Make Vision Boards that Changes Everything​
When I've created vision boards in the past, I found inspiration but not motivation to accomplish my goals. So I stopped creating them. But I recently learned about an alternative to the vision board: the becoming board. A becoming board captures what your day-to-day will look like when you become the person you want to be. I love this idea and am already planning to create a becoming board.

🧰 Tools

Notion​
I've been using Notion for several years now. This software is a really powerful and highly customizable tool for managing tasks, projects, clients, and more. I also use it as my "external brain" to capture my thoughts and ideas.

💬 Quote

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal