I wanted to start a new ritual this year by choosing one word to act as my guiding mantra and primary theme of the year. It’s amazing how powerful this exercise is, yet it is so simple to do. It takes just a few minutes and can bring clarity and focus to your travel blogging or travel writing business.
There are many things I do at the beginning of a new year including creating a vision board, reviewing my content calendar, deciding what projects I want to take on and the courses I want to teach.
Focus (follow one course until successful)
I recently became inspired to dive in to Gary Keller’s book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
As travel writers, we are usually a one (maybe two) person show handling many moving parts. Some of you may be full time travelers, but many travel writers are still working full time jobs and doing their blogging as a hobby. Either scenario, leaves a travel writer with a long list of things on our plate beyond the travel including; content creation, photo editing, managing and marketing a website, social media, email management, researching locations, finding media trips and so much more.
My goal for 2017 is to focus on one project at a time. Whether I am building a new course to teach such as my 15 Day Instagram Course for Travel Bloggers or building my content calendar, my goal is to focus on this ONE THING. I tend to have many projects going at one time, so focusing on one thing at a time will take practice, but I know it will pay off in the long run. I’m not sure if you can relate, but I am tired of starting a new project before I finish one I am already working on.
De-cluttering and Stop E-Mail Overwhelm
When I decided to choose FOCUS as my word for word 2017, I realized I needed to do a bit of housecleaning to have success. There are a few things that suck my time. Email is one of those daily tasks that eats up more time than I would like. My goal is to create remove or organize a few of my daily tasks so I can stay focused on my ONE THING.
I have had enough of the constant barrage of email clutter. (Can you relate?!) I signed up for Unroll.me and unsubscribe from hundreds of mailing lists for my Gmail email that I no longer checked. You may also enjoy Sanebox as well. If you don’t have an email that is supported by the above services, you can also make a point to unsubscribe from three to five mailing lists every time you login to your email.
What’s New Year “Word” Theme?
If you’d like to implement the practice of having a one-word theme, I recommend setting aside some time to journal, or meditate, or doodle… or whatever creative process allows your deepest truth to bubble up.
You’ll know when you’ve found your word, because it will resonate with you! You can envision yourself embodying the word in all kinds of circumstances. You know that you’ll be able to “own” the word for the year.
If you have difficulty selecting just one word, let yourself go for two or three or even a sentence. There are no rules here! Do what’s right for you.
What one word do you feel is the best to reflect your theme for 2017? Please share in the comments below or on this Instagram thread!
I’d love to know what you want to focus on in 2017.
I have been wondering what my word for 2017 should be when I started my planning for 2017 last week. When I read your article it really resonated with me. I think I will follow your example and do FOCUS! I like what it stands for!
My focus is building my blog for the reason I started it. I have a niche I want to be an authority in and a strategy, but really exciting opportunities like free travel take away my focus as well as marketing idea outside of my original plan. My goal is to stay focused on building my blog using the strategy I have planned and not let other things throw me off.
A year brings many things for our life. We get something new when a calendar year come again. Thanks lot and wishes for you!