Peter Bregman writes for the Harvard Business Review and he never fails to make me THINK! He wrote about strategic plans and resolutions in his article "What’s Your One Big Theme?" If you are an over achiever like me you have a long list of things to be accomplished… and that means if "my cup DOESN’T runneth over" I don’t have enough to do. But, we know… old dogs can learn new tricks… so I’m taking Peter’s advice to heart.

What Peter explains is when he looked back on 2011 he didn’t start with what he didn’t do, but rather he looked at what went well. Looking at the things he accomplished and the headway he made… he FELT the success. 

Peter tells us that, "Then, fueled by a feeling of accomplishment, I looked at my list of things to change from a broader perspective, asking myself: What’s this really about?

That’s when I noticed the theme: I’m moving too fast.

I realized that pursuing an individual development plan for each thing I wanted to fix would only worsen the problem. I needed to reduce the complexity, not add to it.

So I came up with a single idea — a theme for the coming year — that would positively impact everything I wanted to change.

My theme? Slow down.

My thought was that if I focused only on that, everything else would improve.

Okay… easier said than done. But it can certainly make you think. And I’m here to tell you it did make me think. What could MY theme be? Could it be REACH? Reach… my market. Reach… my message. Reach… my dreams. OR could it be THINK BIGGER? Or could it be FOCUS? Well, as you can see, I need to work on this. How about YOU?  

Black Pearl: Here’s Peter’s new book… 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done.