When I first started thinking about my word of the year for 2024, I kept coming back to the word “attention.” I wanted to be more careful about where I spent my time, what I gave my attention to, and how I allowed my attention to be pulled in different directions.
But the more I thought about it, I realized that my intention is really about more than just my attention. It’s about being more intentional about all of my choices – how I spend my work time, how I approach my time with my family, how connected I stay to my friends, and how I set goals for my business.
I’m now in my fifth year of working for myself. I’m very happy to be self-employed, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come. And while I’m certainly proud of revenue growth and other traditional business metrics, what’s more important to me is the healthy distance I’ve established between myself and my business.
When I was first starting out, I was unsure about a lot of things: how to set up my LLC, how to manage the new tasks of filing quarterly taxes and paying contractors and developing contracts and pricing my work. I was unsure about how I wanted to brand myself and how to talk about my work. Those swirling questions felt weighty and personal, closely connected to who I was as a person.
Now, though, with the benefit of a few years behind me, those questions feel much more settled and much less personal. I don’t feel any kind of existential ache about my business branding or what I post on LinkedIn, and there are very few work emails that make a substantial impact on my day-to-day equilibrium. I feel like I’ve achieved a decade-long goal of pushing my work a little farther away from me, holding it at arm’s length instead of letting it envelop me.
And it’s in that positive, fairly privileged headspace that I can arrive at my word of the year for 2024: I want to be more and more intentional about my decisions.
Being more intentional about my work
In my business, that means defining who I want to work with and what I want to work on, and more boldly pursuing that work. For example, in 2024 I would like to ghostwrite another business book. I worked with authors on their books in 2021 and 2022, and I’m ready to take on another big bookwriting project. And I’m taking intentional steps toward fulfilling that goal, instead of hoping that the universe drops it in my lap. Later this month, I’m attending Gathering of the Ghosts, an in-person meetup for professional ghostwriters. I intend to talk to fellow ghostwriters, the agents who connect ghostwriters with their clients, and publishing experts in order to find a path to my next ghostwriting client.
Being more intentional about my time
I also want to be intentional about how I structure my time each day and week. As I get older and my kids get older, the Annie Dillard axiom, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” rings more and more true. I feel time slipping away faster, and I don’t want to spend my precious days scrolling Instagram. So, I intend to spend less time on social media, less time on my phone/computer when I’m not working, and more time soaking in my kids at the ages they are right now.
The other day, I was snuggled up on the couch with both kids and they asked to do one of their favorite things: Watch old videos of themselves as babies. For past generations, that might have meant pulling out home movies or photo albums. For my kids, it’s convincing me to get my phone and scroll back a few years in my massive Dropbox photo archive.
We landed on a video of my oldest when she was one year old, in 2016. She was trying to make a fish face, and failing hilariously. I remembered every detail of that moment with my baby, but it was somehow 8 years ago. And I know that in a few years when my kids are teenagers, I’ll look back on these moments with my kids and feel the same pull of time.
All that to say, I’m recognizing that I’m the only one who can make intentional choices about how I spend my days. So this year, I’m going to continue my practice of not taking any client calls on Fridays, leaving white space on my calendar to be an active participant in my own life. I intend to prioritize being involved at my kids’ school and in their activities, volunteering in my community, being outside, and intentionally connecting with friends.
Now, I’m off to write the word “intentional” on a big poster on my office wall, to remind me to slow down and think carefully any time a client request, stressful moment, or disorienting day threatens to pull me away from my intentions.
I’ll close by paraphrasing something I heard the other day that stuck with me: One of the coolest parts of life is that there are so many chances to start over. So many new beginnings. We’re lucky to have that.
Here’s to a new year!
