My Three Words for 2014

It’s fashionable for anyone with a blog to post their New Years’ resolutions, but I have never been very original or consistent. (Looks like my last attempt was in 2011 - that's lame.) So instead, I will follow the lead of Chris Brogan and Bryan Vartabedian and choose three words that I hope will be my guideposts for 2014:

Focus. I will try to be less distractible and multi-task less this year. I will try to start every week by creating a short, realistic list of what I want to accomplish. Certain things will always pull me away from tasks, with patient care being the most important. But in my other jobs - EHR design/implementation at Hopkins, Cancer.Net editorship, JOP podcasts, social media research and evangelism - I will focus more on the task at hand, even if it’s only 20 minutes of uninterrupted thinking. And speaking of 20 minutes, I will try to spend 20 minutes every single day in the month of January writing (here's the source of that one). Not sure if that means that my blog will be any more successful, but a 20 minute goal is manageable.

Innovate. I’ve never thought of myself as visionary or creative, since I’m more the slow, steady, and thorough type, but I will try to devote energy and personal resources to creating innovative ideas for the things that are important to me, including patient-centered care, consumer-health informatics and patient-reported outcomes, and the intersection of digital health and cancer care. I would like to look back at the end of 2014 and say these are the 5, 10, 20, whatever truly original ideas I came up with and what I did with them.

Recharge. I will try to spend a fixed amount of time every week unplugging from what I have to do and do what I want to do (notice I didn’t specify the amount of time - I’m still trying to figure that out). I will recharge by exercise, listening to music, and reading for pure pleasure.

Wish me luck…