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:

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

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.

• 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.)

• 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! 🎉