How do you face the New Year? With anticipation and enthusiasm or with regrets for a lack of achievement in the old year?

Until two years ago, I always found the last few days of the old year and the first few of the new, a disconcerting and unbalanced, time. As if I was torn between letting go of the old with its unfinished business, and embracing the new with all its promises, hopes and uncertainties.

The change in routine over the holiday period, less time working, the stress of Christmas shopping (which I always left to the last minute) and in my case, remembering the loss of my father in tragic circumstances on 31 December 1979, all added to this feeling of aprehensive transition.

What changed? Firstly, the realisation that my father would not have wanted me to be miserable over what should be a joyous holday period. By remembering our time together, his courage, his values and the lessons he taught me, I have now let go of my end of year sadness.

Secondly, one of my mentors introduced me to the idea of “archiving” the year nearing completion, as a foundation for setting my goals for the New Year.

For the last two years, I have taken a day during this holiday week to do this exercise. Here is how I do it;

I keep a fairly detailed daily diary or journal, I also track all my important business activities, new contacts, new customers, sales, meetings, networking and internet activities, how many times I have ridden my horses, how they have improved over the year, how many times have I expanded my comfort zone in my business, personal, social and recreational life. What new things have I done. Seminars and webinars I have attended, books I have read, new skills I have aquired or improved.

This week, I analysed all of these and listed my achievements and disappointments, it’s amazing how the first list is so much longer than the second. It’s only after doing this exercise that I realise that depsite the earlier feeling that I did not achieve enough, I did achieve many of my goals, and the disappointments were fewer than I thought.

Then I look at how I limited myself during the year, what I have learned from the exercise and how I can improve in the New Year.

Finally, I print it all out, put it in a folder and file it away. The physical act of filing it away clears any lingering disappointments, should any of these start to surface again in the new year, I remind myself that they have been archived, I picture the red folder marked “Archives 2009″ in the filing cabinet and that does the trick.

Then I write out my goals for the new year and my vision statement.

Here are 2 sites I found that are great time savers;

Tweetminer A very useful tool for importng content and posting tweets to twitter.

Gizapage a great way to let all your contacts find all your social media sites on one url.

Disclosure: I am not an affiliate for either, do not earn commissions for referring them, just find them good.

Wishing you a wonderful and wildly successful New Year and success in all your endeavours.

Just read a great, thought provoking article “Is Money Destroying the world?” by Mike Dillard with excerpts of Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged”, it’s worth reading.

I lost everything in Zimbabwe because the government not only acted outside the law, but used the police and other security forces to confiscate the property of thousands of productive citizens.

In the process the economy was destroyed and only the “looters” prospered.

Any wonder that I and, by the number of comments on Mike Dillards article, many others are concerned at the continuous expansion of Government control and the concerted efforts of supposedly neutral organisations to cripple the productive economies and distribute their wealth to the have nots.

If you are an entrepreneur, read the article, it will make you think. Then read the book, it will really make you think!

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

p.s If you are not on Mike Dillards list check out Magnetic Sponsoring

Disclaimer, as an affiliate, I earn a commission on items ordered from Amazon and Magnetic Sponsoring links on this blog.

It seems that every one and his dog is looking for the magic pill that will catapult him or her to instant online success.

Places on webinars fill up quickly, new product launches are enthusiastically supported, each element of on line marketing has it’s turn as flavour of the week, SEO, PPC, email marketing, free ads, articles, SMM – the list goes on.

So what’s missing here, so many resources, free training, articles, videos, newsletters, seminars, webinars, huge amounts of time spent learning and studying, but little success. Is the Paretto principle alive and well? 20% of internet entrepreneurs taking in 80% of the profits, leaving the struggling majority to share the 20% scraps left over. (My guess is it’s even higher)

My view on what’s missing – three things, two closely related and feeding each other, the third a symptom of effective marketing.
1) Focus
There is so much information available, that it becomes overwhelming,
instead of starting with a simple marketing plan, improving on it and putting it into action, it is too easy to adopt the “flavour of the week” strategy, never getting proficient at any single strategy.

2) Action
Lack of action and lack of focus have an incestuous relationship, two sides of a coin, they feed, and feed off, each other. Not being sure of the ability to get started, it’s too easy to spend more time learning, then when thinking that the latest webinar / article / product listened to / read / bought has the ultimate secret to on line success, at last action, but the business is not an immediate success, so what happens? Back into the learning stage, find something else to try, the result, no effective and consistent action.

3) Unrealistic Expectations
Conventional wisdom indicates that it takes 10 000 hours or around 10 years to become an expert in a profession, lets accept that in many fields of endeavour, a person can become successful well before becoming an expert. Many athletes, sports stars and entertainers start bringing in big money well before 10 years.

But very, very, few people in any field of endeavour are wildly successful in their first year.

Unfortunately, too many hopeful and desperate, internet novices accept all the suggestions in the sales copy and become discouraged when success does not come immediately.

Are the marketers of systems and programs to blame? I don’t think so

Will the new FTC regulations change this? Maybe to some extent, but it’s up to each one of us to recognise that no matter how good the programs and systems that we buy might be, it’s up to us to put in the effective, consistent action to make our businesses work.

Perhaps the best product to market on the internet is hope, it’s what so many people are buying.

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.