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In 2009 I got married, bought a house, sat on three boards, volunteered on multiple committees, continued my master’s degree and got a puppy.  To sum it up, it was hectic.  At the beginning of the year I sensed my year was going to be a bit crazy, so I set some personal and professional strategies for myself.  Those strategies were:

Personal Strategies

• Find personal balance.
• Get married.
• Set time aside for personal creativity.
• Focus my civic engagement.
• Make my blog worth writing for.
• Complete my masters without going crazy.

Professional Strategies

• Find balance at work.
• Integrate what I am learning in my masters program.
• Don’t be so hard on myself and don’t take it personally.
• Stay connected with my growing network.
• Learn something from each of my coworkers.
• Put my thoughts about nonprofit systems on paper.

Over the course of the year, many strategies got left behind and others became habit.  I knew when I developed these strategies; it might not be realistic for me to follow through on all of them.  I set too many strategies and set my self up to fail.  This year I am combining my strategies into three “life strategies”, one’s I am confident I can accomplish.  These strategies are meant to be a sort of New Year’s resolution I am hoping to follow through for a long time.

My Life Strategies for 2010 are:

Wake up one hour earlier. I have to finally admit, my typical wake up time is not until after 7 am.  Sleep has been my sanctuary, because of my over worked days.  My hope is that changing my wake up time to an hour earlier will give me more time to get things done around the house in the morning, go to the gym, blog, or what ever else I would like to do in the morning.  I also believe my oversleeping is leading to my drowsiness in the mornings, and if I narrow my sleep time to 7 hours a night I am hoping to have more energy.  My sleeping sanctuary will be replaced with exercise, a calm morning breakfast before work, or time to write before handing my brain over to my workplace. All these options sound much better then one more hour of unproductive sleep each morning.

Keep a positive attitude. This strategy may seem a little “pie in the sky”, but it definitely feels worth it.  With my busy schedule and hectic workplace, it is very easy to become negative and stressed about everything.  This commitment to staying positive will give me a reason to stop myself from becoming negative and give me a chance to be positive in each situation.  I am also using this strategy to learn from each of my experiences.  I don’t seem to learn anything when I am only looking at the bad side of things.

Before taking on anything new, ensure it is good for me and my family. My new marriage, along with my string of baggage commitments, has made balance hard over the past year.  I have only been married eight months, so there is a lot of learning to do, but one immediate lesson has been comparing my volunteer commitments with how much quality time I spend at home.  Before I got married I was on three boards, in leadership positions on two of them, along with three more volunteer committees.  This is too much, even for a single person, especially while working on my master’s degree.  Since April, I have narrowed my commitments down to the three boards, one of which will be ending soon.  Going forward I am only sticking to the commitments I currently have and will only be adding to them if the outcome will be positive for both my career, self interests, and my family.  This is going to be especially hard for me.  I am very easily distracted by the idea of working with amazing people on great projects.  No more, I have a life time to try everything I want to do.

What strategies are you implementing in 2010?  Have you set some career resolutions for yourself?