I Quit.

Does your company have goals you want to complete in this blink-of-an-eye time between now and year’s end? How about personal goals?

See, I’ve been the better part of sick for the worse part of five days. It led off with the achy, shaky stuff but really cleaned up with a chest cough that keeps me up when I lie down.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about illness and wellness and what’s working well and what not.

Does your company have goals you want to complete in the blink-of-an-eye time between now and year’s end? How about personal ones? Ours does. I do.

As a company, we’ve got eight specific goals to accomplish between now and 12/31/13 (actually, more like 12/18/13 – we take a company-wide two weeks off to recharge).

As a man, I’m trying to be a more consistently delightful husband and father and to read more. I have a long queue of books, and the one I just started – The New American Standard Bible – is kinda long. (I’m starting with the Gospels. The Old Testament sorta overwhelms me, but I know I’ll get there.)

But we’re already busy, aren’t we, and there are only 168 hours in a week.

Over the weekend, I deactivated my facebook account, and I removed all the social media apps from my phone except LinkedIn because one, I’m sure it has some sort of practical professional purpose, and two, I don’t really know how to utilize it.

That’s one of my goals. The others – including making our clients as tickled as possible – required more margin.

Should you quit something, too?

May I suggest:

1. Choosing personal and professional goals you wish to accomplish between now and the end of the year. Be specific. Be clear. Write them down.
2. Reverse engineer their completion. In other words, visualize your work or life once they are complete and work backwards to discover the necessary steps to start moving forwards.
3. Prioritize your goals so that if required completion steps of two of them come into conflict, you’ll know which one to do first.
4. Put the next right thing to do to complete each goal on your to-do list.
5. Think about what you’re willing to give up so you can complete your goals. Even though 168 hours is a lot in a week, something will have to give. What gives?
6. Give it away. At least for a while.
7. Get to work, and get set to enjoy your winter holiday like never before.

That’s my latest status update. Hope you like it.

Oh, and PS – Because I still have a sharing addiction, I may occasionally PS you something worth reading… like Rick Reilly’s latest column for ESPN about one of my favorite people on earth… who’s never quit… or complained… University of Minnesota football coach Jerry Kill.