2019 in the Rear View

Con­fes­sion: I’m writ­ing this more for me than any­one else. As a result, I’m not spend­ing much time build­ing out the sto­ry of 2019. But I fig­ured a few lists would be a nice way to look back at the twelve months behind. After all, I’m just look­ing in the rear view mir­ror right now, and I’d rather spend more time look­ing out my wind­shield toward 2020, and the decade ahead. I’ll write more on that in January. 😁

With that, here are a few lists of…random things:

9 Goals or Inten­tions for 2019

I Decem­ber of 2018 I made a list of things I want­ed to either accom­plish or spend time on for this year. I knocked out 7 of the 9, which I’m proud of. Here’s the list:

• ✔️ Read 30 books
• ✔️ Build more muscle
• ✔️ Spend less time on my phone
• ✔️ Try enough new things to fail mul­ti­ple times
• ✔️ Learn from each failure
• ✔️ Sharp­en my focus on help­ing people
• Com­plete my work­shop build­out plans
• ✔️ Jour­nal an aver­age of 3 times a week 
• Write for my blog at least twice a month

Books I Read

I track most of my read­ing on Goodreads, so you can see the list over there, or check out the list below.

• Dare to Lead
• What the Most Suc­cess­ful Peo­ple Do Before Breakfast
• The 5 Lan­guages of Appre­ci­a­tion in the Work­place: Empow­er­ing Orga­ni­za­tions by Encour­ag­ing People
• Every Good Endeav­or: Con­nect­ing Your Work to God’s Work
• Rad­i­cal Can­dor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss With­out Los­ing Your Humanity
• Sim­ply Said: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Bet­ter at Work and Beyond
• Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Hap­pi­ness, Think­ing, and Health
• Think and Eat Your­self Smart: A Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic Approach to a Sharp­er Mind and Health­i­er Life
• Can Sci­ence Explain Everything?
• The Leader’s Guide to Sto­ry­telling: Mas­ter­ing the Art and Dis­ci­pline of Busi­ness Narrative
• Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Cre­ative in Good Times and Bad
• Up from Slavery
• Silence: In the Age of Noise
• A Sin by Any Oth­er Name: Reck­on­ing with Racism and the Her­itage of the South
• The Dichoto­my of Lead­er­ship: Bal­anc­ing the Chal­lenges of Extreme Own­er­ship to Lead and Win
• Make Your Bed: Lit­tle Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World
• What the Heck Is EOS?: A Com­plete Guide for Employ­ees in Com­pa­nies Run­ning on EOS
• Every Tool’s a Ham­mer: Life Is What You Make It
• Sev­en Days That Divide the World: The Begin­ning Accord­ing to Gen­e­sis and Science
• Read­ing Peo­ple: How See­ing the World through the Lens of Per­son­al­i­ty Changes Everything
• Strengths­Find­er 2.0 (not so much a book as it is a list of ​“strengths” that go along with the Strengths­Find­er 2.0 sys­tem of typ­ing people)
• Maybe You Should Talk to Some­one: A Ther­a­pist, HER Ther­a­pist, and Our Lives Revealed
• The Road Back to You: An Ennea­gram Jour­ney to Self-Discovery
• The Sacred Ennea­gram: Find­ing Your Unique Path to Spir­i­tu­al Growth
• Build a Bet­ter Brain: Using Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty to Train Your Brain for Moti­va­tion, Dis­ci­pline, Courage, and Men­tal Sharpness
• Effec­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: 5 Essen­tial Tips and Exer­cis­es to Improve How You Com­mu­ni­cate in This Divid­ed World, Even If It Is About Pol­i­tics, Race or Gender!
• Ren­o­va­tion of the Heart in Dai­ly Prac­tice: Exper­i­ments in Spir­i­tu­al Transformation
• Liv­ing For­ward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drift­ing and Get the Life You Want
• The Ruth­less Elim­i­na­tion of Hur­ry: How to Stay Emo­tion­al­ly Healthy and Spir­i­tu­al­ly Alive in the Chaos of the Mod­ern World
• Hid­den in Christ: Liv­ing as God’s Beloved

The book I ben­e­fit­ed from most this year: The Ruth­less Elim­i­na­tion of Hurry.

Some Fun Stuff

• I gave away about 25 books.
• I spoke at a con­fer­ence called Geek­end, which is one of the first con­fer­ences I spoke at in 2011.
• I spoke in-house to Dave Ramsey’s Cre­ative team about storytelling.
• Speak­ing of Dave Ram­sey, my busi­ness part­ners and I went to Entre­Lead­er­ship Sum­mit in San Diego and it was fantastic!
• I went on my first cruise. It was the most relaxed I’ve been on any vacation.
• I played lots of UNO with my kids. (And more to come now that my daugh­ter got UNO FLIP! for Christmas.)
• I start­ed a Fam­i­ly Report to cap­ture excit­ing things about my imme­di­ate fam­i­ly dur­ing a year. I only thought about this lat­er in the year, so I’m more excit­ed to have a full year cap­tured for 2020. (It most­ly cen­ters around our finan­cial sup­port of orga­ni­za­tions so it won’t be shared here.)
• I made some mir­rors for our mas­ter bathroom.
• My fam and my sister’s fam hit Dis­ney World togeth­er. Good times!
• I intro­duced my son to the say com­mand in Terminal 😆
• I made a short video about ten­sion.
• I implied more videos would come, then decid­ed to move my home office to a new room, result­ing in no addi­tion­al videos being shot. 😆 (But they’ll come in the new year.)

Some things ahead in 2020

• I’ll be com­plet­ing an accent shiplap wall in my mas­ter bed­room. It’s a project I start­ed in Jan­u­ary and put on the back­burn­er for a while. (I should be done with that in a few days actually.)
• I have a fun work­shop project in mind that I hope to com­plete in the first quar­ter of the year.
• I plan to start writ­ing my first book. 😳🙂
• I’ll be fin­ish­ing out my new home office which I’m quite excit­ed about.
• It will be the most focused year yet for Focus Lab. (How appropriate. 😄)
• I look for­ward to giv­ing more away (time, books, mon­ey, etc).
• I’ve got some ambi­tious goals — but will hold off just a bit before writ­ing about them. 

Here’s to 2020! 🎉