How to Prepare Yourself for the New Year: Eight Year End Optimization Tips

Around this time of the year, I’ll take a look at my ongoing projects and habits in order for a major evaluation/cleanup. I’m a superstitious man and I don’t like to bring bad luck or poor management into the new year.

The 1st of January is an auspicious day for new beginnings and the last few days in December can be put to good use if you want to get off to a terrific start next year.

If you’re not holidaying, you might want to look over your habits for the past year and adjust accordingly to meet your 2008 goals.

Apart from taking a mini break this holiday season, I’m also doing some final prep work for 2008. I thought I’ll share what I’m doing in the last days of 2007. Feel free to apply any of the following points if you find them helpful in any way:

1. Asset Assessment. How did all my websites perform in 2007? I’ll take a look at how much money each of them made and compare them with the amount of time I spend on each (yes, I track the time spent on each site).

   Because I’m going to build more websites in 2008, I need to cut off the ones that I’ve lost interest in or have no time to grow. Do the same by looking at your web properties and ventures. Knowing when to quit is smart thinking.




2. Time Assessment. How much time am I spending on each task? I’ve spent huge chunks of time on social media websites and that’s something I’m reducing next year. Social media sites like Digg don’t care about their users. If I take the time I’ve spent on them and convert it to time on my own sites, I can easily make thousands of dollars more each month.

   And I’m not joking. Having influencers in your pocket gives the freedom to stop being someone else’s user-generated content. Examine how you’ve been spending your time online and adjust according to your goals.




3. Workplace Revamp. I work from home and my income is entirely web-driven so it makes sense to make my room as conducive as possible for online work. I’m working on a laptop at the moment but I’m thinking of getting a proper desktop with a couple of monitors. I may get a new chair, mouse and a new hifi system (can’t work without listening to some tunes).

   I’m rearranging my room as well to stay fresh and creative. I first came across this interesting tip from a Real Estate Agent who did this every month. Revamp your workplace and make it a catalyst for productivity.




4. Feed Reader Cleanup. Feed reading takes up a chunk of my time because I need to stay current on what’s going on in several industries. It’s part of the job when you’re a content publisher. Too many feeds and you have a lot of clutter to sift through, too little and you miss breaking or dominating a news topic. The trick is to be brutal and methodical.

   Remove what doesn’t benefit you, put ‘entertainment‘ feeds in another reader and rely on sites which aggregate and spit out content rapidly. News sites like Techcrunch and niche social news sites like Sphinn are terrific for this purpose. Look through your feed reader and make sure you are only subscribed to the sites that matter or the sites that help you. Organize your feeds.




5. Computer Cleanup. My computer is full of stuff that I’ve downloaded while surfing the net. I’ll do a major cleanup to free up some space on it while categorizing everything properly. Uninstall applications I don’t need, defrag the hard disk and clean it of all the useless junk that’s around.

   Organizing my document and image folders will take the most of my time. I should do this monthly but I’m lazy so a year end clean up will reduce clutter and make everything more organized for 2008. Optimize your computer, make it run faster and prep it for online work next year.




6. Future Work Scheduling. If you don’t have an editorial calendar, you probably should set one up for your site because it’ll help you to blog more consistently and stay active in 2008. I’m currently planning some of the things I want to do for my sites and I have a ton of interesting things lined up for Dosh Dosh, some of them you probably won’t even expect.

   Use a calender to plot your other work schedules. If you need a desktop calender, I recommend Rainlendar. Plan how what you are going to work on each month and schedule what needs to be done according to your resources.




7. Finances Forecast. I’ll usually do a simple excel spreadsheet with all the expenses I know I will incur: this includes bills like internet services, monthly magazine or online subscriptions, rent etc.

   If I’m planning a trip during summer 2008 or want to purchase something big, I’ll need a rough idea of how much extra income I need to generate every month, in order to get enough money.

   This forecast allows me to match income sources with expenses and thus develop contingency plans. Record your future expenses and plot it against your revenue. Leave aside funds to expand your ongoing projects.




8. Mending Relationships. This applies to both online and offline friends or acquaintances. I never start a new year with a grudge so I’ll contact people who I had arguments with and apologize if I think I offended the other person. This is to fix any misunderstandings or miscommunication and is especially important if you have a working relationship with the other party.

   Grudges and regrets are major obstacles to moving forward and I try my best to make sure I have none of both, though its always difficult to not have regrets. Make sure you’re moving into the new year with a clean conscience. The gist of this point is simple: don’t carry any negative emotional baggage over to the New Year.

Think of yourself as a machine. You are a woman or man of enormous potential. Everything is possible in the new year if you have the heart for it. What you need to do is to grease the wheels, make sure you’re all well-oiled and ready to roll. Take care of the periphery details and you’ll find that you’ll reach your goals a lot faster.

So what are y’all doing in the last few days of 2007?