Letter To My Future Self

Last Friday I celebrated the completion of my 49th annual orbit around the sun, which means I’ve just begun the 12-month journey of my 50th solar flight.

Should this semicentennial adventure end as safely as the others, there are a few things I hope to have accomplished or experienced (or projects I simply hope to have completed!) in my quinquagenarian year. I thought I’d put these thoughts on paper to review a year from now on December 4, 2016 and see how many of my current wants, wishes, plots, and plans align with my not-too-distant future self’s…

Dear Old Man Don ~
If you’re reading this — Happy Birthday!
If you’re not, well… you have bigger problems (and I hope you’re wearing your asbestos Batman Underoos!)

This was a big (yellow sticky!) year for you.
In 2015 you completed 365 straight days of creating and posting “Big Yellow Sticky” notes with ideas and advice (and sometimes a cartoon) on them. I expect you continued this tradition (why stop now??) through 2016 and have amassed quite the collection of content soundbites. I trust you’ve figured out a way to monetize these little gems (everybody loves them!)

How goes the ebook authoring?
You sketched out that “Yellow Sticky Guide to Done” book early in 2015 and promised a series created in the same vein by using the Paper app from FiftyThree. The app’s creator threw you a curveball by changing up their app and you never really went back to it. I hope you at least finished the one on “Beanstorming” and the holiday story of “Wicked Nick” in 2016 (someone else is going to write that Wicked Nick story if you don’t get it published first!)

I know you and Hapy are still …er… happy, but have you made it back to Hawaii this past year? I mean, it IS the 50th state and this has been your 50th year on earth. Seems karmic. Speaking of Hawaii, have you guys put a plan (on paper!) to permanently relocate to the islands? How much longer are you going to wait??

Part of being able to pick-up and move to Hawaii (or anywhere else for that matter!) is the need to reduce the amount of clutter and collectibles you’ve amassed over the years. I know you love your books and DVDs and CDs, but you promised to reduce the number of physical “things” in your life. How’s that going?

Keep the few one-of-a-kind and autographed editions, but get yourself digital copies of everything else. A smaller collection will be easier to transport, much lighter in weight to move, and in the long run it’s cheaper to re-purchase everything in electronic form than it is to keep paying for rent on the larger space required to store the physical copies. You had a good start in December of 2015 when you began putting one book in a box every single day to take to give away or resell. Hopefully you not only maintained it for the entire year, but perhaps started doubling-up the number of items going into the box.

Are you still riding your motorcycle?
Don’t forget how much being on that bike makes you smile. It’s as close to having the power of flight as you can get (at least until the personal jetpacks are available.) Also, did we get a personal jetpack in 2016???

How is the speaking career going?
There’s no energy in the world like being on the platform and you have an absolute blast sharing ideas with a room full of people. What did you do to increase the number of speaking opportunities you had in 2016? Hopefully you finally got a sample video done! Michelle told you that it’s the one thing that would likely lead to more gigs for you.

Have you created at least ONE online course yet?
Online courses and training were really heating up in the second half of 2015 and you promised to create at least one of your own. You signed-up for Chris Brogan’s Online Course Maker class — have you put the ideas and advice from that course into action and launched one of your own?

Card games and boardgames
Did you finish the card game you were working on last year? You were SO close to finishing it in time for Christmas in 2015, but didn’t quite make it. You must be finished with it by now, right? Have you launched the promotional website? Everyone thinks this idea could be the one that makes you rich — people can’t force their money into your hands for a deck of these cards if you don’t get them printed, packaged and available for purchase! What other game ideas have you come up with this year?

How was the Virtual Summit?
You and Mike were working on a virtual summit to help individual salespeople build their brands and be more productive and successful. How did it go? Think you’ll be able to translate it into a live on-site event, or is it better to exist as an online-only event?

Speaking of events, how did the writer’s retreat idea pan out?
I know you only came up with the concept toward the end of last year, and with all the other projects listed above you may not have had time to launch it this year, but how go the plans for next year? I know you had the perfect location picked out in Hocking Hills, but depending how well you did with the other items on your list — perhaps you’ll be holding it in Hawaii instead?

Those were the “big rocks” you said you’d be working on in the new year.
You also said you wanted to increase the number of blog posts you write, start a podcast, create some videos (perhaps to compliment your Big Yellow Sticky project) — how’d you do?

Send me a letter back when you get this in December of 2016 and let me what the future looks like.
~DON

PS: Don’t forget to send an update on the jetpacks!