It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

During the Christmas season, you will find a mixture of stuff about being productive along with some of my favorite Christmas music. To start things off, folks my age remember when Andy Williams had his own variety show. Nobody sings this one like he does.

Holiday Letters from the Future

Setting long-term goals has always been an important theme in time-management literature. Personally, I guess I have always had some individual goals. What has been missing seems to be having that total picture of what my life would look like a year, two years, or five years down the road. That missing link came into focus three years ago. It happened by added a new twist to a well-established practice.

For many years, my wife and I have composed a holiday letter which we enclose in the cards sent each December. The letters recap the events of the past year so that friends who live in other parts of the country can keep up with what we were doing. The letters also serve to help the two of us reflect on the year just passed.

It was in January three years ago that I did something simple that turned out to be very powerful. One afternoon in January, I wrote the holidays letters for each of the upcoming three years. I wrote them as if those years had already passed and were now being recounted to friends. This act forced me to write with the same level of specificity I have always used to recount the past year.

I saved the letters and reviewed them each month. Every month those thoughts were being presented to me. Once a month, I was being reminded of the direction in which I hoped our lives would be headed.

When December arrived and I sat down to write the actual holiday letter which would be mailed, the similarity between what I wrote back in January and what had actually come to pass was remarkably similar. Consciously, I had done nothing differently. Subconsciously, quite a bit was different.

Every day presents little choices that move us either closer to our desired future or farther from it. That once-a-month reminder seems to be making a difference for me. I offer this one simple idea, "Holiday Letters from the Future" for your consideration.

Look for this post later today on the Eye on Education Blog.

Dear Me,

While at the National Middle School Association Convention, my favorite session was one conducted by Lonnie Moore, author of The Inspirational Teacher. One of the ideas he talked about was writing a letter to yourself and reviewing it regularly. That letter could outline your goals, your thoughts about yourself, or whatever was needed to help bring you in line with the "you" that you would like to be.

Lonnie's idea is similar to one that I proposed last December in a post entitled Christmas Letters from the Future. As we approach this Christmas season, I invite you to click on the link and read that post, a post about having a vision for the future, and through regularly reviewing it, bringing reality and that vision closer together.

Christmas Letters from the Future

Setting long-term goals has always been an important theme in time-management literature. Personally, I guess I have always had some individual goals. What has been missing seems to be having that total picture of what my life would look like a year, two years, or five years down the road. That missing link came into focus this year. It happened by added a new twist to a well-established practice.

In a recent post, you read about the Christmas Letter composed each year recapping the events of the past month and how the notes I have jotted to that point in the year resurface once each month.

This year, I sat down in January and wrote the Christmas Letters for 2007, 2008, and 2009. I wrote them as if those years had already passed and were now being recounted to friends. This act forced me to write with the same level of specificity I have always used to recount the past year.

I saved the letters in the note section of a single task on the BlackBerry and set the task to repeat each month. The outcome is that once a month, those thoughts are presented to me. Once a month, I am reminded of the direction in which I hope to be headed.

As I sit here and read what I write this past January, the similarity between what I wrote and what has happened is remarkably similar. Consciously, I have done nothing differently. Subconsciously, quite a bit has been different.

Every day presents little choices that move us either closer to our desired future or farther from it. That once-a-month reminder seems to be making a difference for me. I offer this one simple idea, "Christmas Letters from the Future" for your consideration.

Christmas Letters--Present

Like many of you, Davonia and I have friends scattered all over the country and our communication with them all too often happens through the Christmas cards we sent to each other. For this reason, part of our annual ritual is to compose the "Christmas Letter" to give friends a snapshot of our year.

For me to sit down just after Thanksgiving and mentally relive the events of the past year is a bit much for me. Therefore, "Add items for Christmas Newsletter" is a repeating task that appears on my BlackBerry the first day of the month. I mentally review the events of the past month, and in the note section of that task, I jot a phrase descriptive of whatever memorable had happened. By Thanksgiving, I have notes from the entire year all in one place. The job of composing the Christmas Letter become one of simply deciding what to include, what to omit, and put the ideas together into sentences.

For those who organize with pencil and paper, you could accomplish the same thing with one piece of paper. Label the top line "Christmas Letter" and throw it in the tickler file for the first day of the month. When that piece of paper resurfaces, jot down your ideas and refile the paper for the first day of the next month. That piece of paper will present itself to you as regular as clockwork 12 times during the year. When it appears on December 1, compose your letter!

Coming soon--Christmas Letters from the Future