Hell Yes

In the past when I've done my resolutions as I start to write them out I've always asked myself "what else"? My approach to 2018 is different. 2018 is the year of the Hell Yes. Part of this line of thought is the usual December thoughts of wrapping up the year and thinking about what I want to accomplish in the year ahead. This year has an additional consideration; my looming 50^th in January. 

As an aside, I had to laugh last month when some co-workers received black balloons for their 30^th and 40^th birthdays. I suppose I’ll have dead flowers or something similar to look forward to.

But back to the subject at hand. When I started on my 50^th year goals, I thought about the number 50. Wouldn’t it be great to do 50 things in my 50^th year? Then I started to list them out and after I got past a few they were getting pretty lame, or they were things I wasn’t committed to.

And I continued to think about Essentialism, the book we read for our company book club earlier this year. There is a line in the book that says something like “if it’s not a Hell Yes, it’s a no”.

2018 is the year of Hell Yes (and plenty heck no). I am stripping away many of the items on my “50 List”. I’m cutting things off my to do list. I challenged my team to come up with their own Hell Yes for 2018 (at least one, no more than three).

And then commit, overcommit, to accomplishing the Hell Yeses. What if you spent the year executing the handful of things you are most passionate about? At work, what would be the impact on your organization if everyone found their Hell Yeses? And what would be positive side effects of all the supporting actions (or inactions) required to execute on your list? Imagine all the crap that would be eliminated.

Hell Yes. 2018 (and 50) is going to be a heckuva year.