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We have spent a lot of time in the past three years keeping things together. The economy. Industries. Companies. Lives. All of this has been super important, because without our MacGyver-esque patchwork, the chances are good that everything would have come undone.

In 2010, we can honestly say that we’ve survived. Sure, there are still plenty of areas of concern in marketing, the economy, social media, etc. There are and always will be areas in which we can do better, in which we can shore up problems. But we’ve survived. We’ve gotten this far. We’ve played defense and kept the opposing team known as chaos more or less at bay.

The problem with playing only defense, no matter how superbly? No sports team has ever won a game by being solely good at defense – at best, you’ll only end in a tie. That doesn’t mean defense isn’t important. It does mean that to win more, you have to stop playing only defense and start taking ground, start putting some of your own numbers up on the scoreboard.

As we look out at the vast expanse of history yet to be written in 2010, the 364 days ahead, I’d encourage you to change your game. I’d encourage you to play less defense and more offense.

I’d encourage you to play to your strength, which is my personal theme for this year. Prior to the Great Recession and ensuing scramble for survival, there were things that in good times you were really good at. You had these as strengths, as superhero powers. These were your star quarterbacks, your best offense. You might have been superb at search engine optimization or writing eBooks or designing new products. These are the skills that made you happy, made you productive, and made you some money. These are the skills that out of necessity you had to backburner in order to keep the lights on in your organization. When the opposing team rushed you, you had to get your offense off the field and get your defense in play as fast as possible.

Do you remember them?

It’s time to reawaken those skills. It’s time to reawaken your superhero, dust off the cape and powers, get your best quarterback off the bench, and play to the things that you’re really good at and enjoy. True, you may have a different job or title today than you did during the last boom, but the mental skills and faculties you previously had are still there. Find ways to bring them back into the work you are doing now.

Play to your strengths. Deploy your offense. Look for opportunities to do more of what you know you’re really good at. Find ways to work your powers into more of what you do every day. Give your defensive linemen a breather and score a touchdown or two this year.

See you on the field.

Photo credit: Chip Griffin

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A lot of people talk about rebooting for the New Year.

So, question for you: what happens when you reboot?

Here’s a look inside what happens in your computer the moment you hit the power switch and boot it up. This is, for the geeks, the power-on self-test, or POST. (derived from Wikipedia)

• verify the integrity of the BIOS code itself
• find, size, and verify system main memory
• discover, initialize, and catalog all system buses and devices
• pass control to other specialized BIOSes (if and when required)
• provide a user interface for system’s configuration
• identify, organize, and select which devices are available for booting
• construct whatever system environment that is required by the target OS

In well designed computers, the average end user never sees this. It happens in the blink of an eye, behind the scenes while a corporate logo of some kind displays. Only when something is seriously wrong do we ever see a non-typical outcome of a POST, usually followed by loud noises, swearing, and other gestures towards the computer.

This is a perfect analogy to how we treat ourselves every day, only as human beings with more sophisticated error handling, even when something’s wrong we keep soldiering on. Only very rarely and when something is seriously wrong do we stop to think about our own boot-up sequences, when we just can’t get going any more.

As you head into the New Year, think about making your own POST sequence for yourself, for your life, to run those daily diagnostics and catch trouble far earlier than we usually do. What would a human POST look like?

• Verify your basic health. The moment you wake up, take a deep, cleansing breath and physically just be aware of your own body. Do things hurt? Are there discomforts or nagging aches that are new? Do you know their causes – and if not, do you have access to someone to help you diagnose them?
• Load up your own main memory. A lot of folks enjoy purchasing incredibly elaborate organizational systems for the New Year, only to abandon them 23 minutes into the year when they realize the massive setup costs in terms of time. Start simple, even with sticky notes, but start a main memory load each day of basic stuff you want to get done that day.
• Catalog and assess your resources and devices. Not just physical devices like phones and laptops (though certainly making sure those are in working order is a good idea), but also your own assets and capabilities. What capacities and capabilities do you have available to you each day?
• Construct your system environment. Make a habit out of preparing the things that will help you the most for each day. It may be a great cup of coffee, a five minute meditation, a favorite pre-work CD of tunes for the car – construct whatever helps you establish the most positive environment you need for each day.
• Boot! You can even make a silly chime noise if you want. I won’t tell.

Try to construct your own POST so that when you need to boot or reboot into the New Year, you have something drawn up and ready to go.

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