100 New Year Resolutions – Building Content Creators Habits

100 ideas to inspire you to improve by 1% (or more) as a  ‘1 %’ content creator in 2012. Follow-up to our 99 content creator gift ideas post. Capture – engage – express – inspire others – inspire yourself –  learn – personal – productivity – upgrade – enjoy!

• Capture
  • Start using a pen tablet
  • Take a self-portrait – every day
  • Brainstorm via whiteboard - melamine - porcelain.
  • Subscribe to great feeds. Delete unproductive feeds.
  • Start your personal wiki – Outlook - Evernote - Google Docs- Zotero
  • Carry your commonplace book – everywhere – e.g., soft cover or hard cover Moleskine
  • Journal – before you create. Every time – clear your mind – in your wiki or commonplace book
  • Backup your creations to the cloud - Amazon - Box - CrashPlan - Dropbox - Evernote - FilePigeon - Zotero
  • Leverage voice recognition – WSR best w/ WSR Macros and WSRtoolkit – or perhaps, Dragon NaturallySpeaking
  • Exploit your Tricorder - AKA, smart phone  - camera – voice recorder – calculator – sketchpad – notepad – & much more.
    
  
• Engage
  • Bike. Share. Transit.
  • Review suggested links  - Facebook – LinkedIn – Twitter
  • Create equivalent of KANEKO event for your content medium
  • Create the equivalent of the Omaha Public Art project – in your area
  • Create equivalent of SquishTalks in your community – conversation matters
  • Participate in local conferences - Barcamp (home) - Ignite - Startup Weekend - TEDx
  • Give back - share the subscription page of your favorite content creators with family, friends, & colleagues
  • Participate in global conferences - Big Omaha - Burning Man- Defrag - GlueCon - Lollapalooza - Strange Loop - SXSW - TED
  • Curator – keep in touch with other creators – share your discoveries – Delicious – FriendFeed – Scoop.it – Paper.li – Pinterest – Storify
  • Participate in social media – actively – consistent engagement on a few channels better than only creating profiles on many channels

• Express
  • Inform first-time visitors
  • Cultivate the repeat visitors
  • Determine your life vision – write it down.
  • Find your why – update folks on your vision
  • Include more photos, videos, or other graphics
  • Blog – every day – NaBloPoMo – re: NaNoWriMo
  • Align your posts with your blog’s purpose – and don’t be afraid to add variety.
  • Teach someone – About – Quora – SkillShare – SlideShare – Udemy – Veri – Wikipedia
  • Write a book – some people only need thirty days – with a tech-strapped typewriter
  • Acquire a 3-D printer – or access to RepRap, MakerBot or Up! via your local Maker Group

• Inspire Others
  • What is your “TED talk”? Create it.
  • Minimize stuff. Maximize potential.
  • Create. Share. Do. Repeat. You may fail. That’s ok.
  • Write your story – why did you become a content creator?
  • Move from consumer to producer – that’s what people remember.
  • Stop trying to be best at what you do. Be the only one who does what do.
  • Speak at local conference - Barcamp (home) - Ignite - Startup Weekend - TEDx
  • Speak at global conference - Big Omaha - Burning Man - Defrag - GlueCon - Lollapalooza - Strange Loop - SXSW - TED

• Inspire Yourself
  • Get Little Big Planet. Play it.
  • Go to art museum – save funds – go virtually
  • Talk with someone older – or more experienced – or both
  • Talk with someone younger – or less experienced – or both
  • Don’t be Van Gogh – come into the light – better yet, sunlight.
  • Make time for randomness – AKA, creativity is combination of signal &  noise
  • Music streaming - premium or otherwise - last.fm - Locusic - Pandora - Spotify - Slacker
  • Look to the stars - Google Sky - Android - more apps - from obvious & observatory to sci-fi
  • Read about creative simplicity - creativity & discipline co-exist  - Q.E.D. – Beauty in Mathematical Proof
  • Express via different medium – before writing, speak – before speaking, write – before drawing,  video

• Learn
  • Consider cultivating a Bonsai Tree
  • Listen to one TED talk – every weekday
  • Read about innovation – in the third world
  • Take something apart. Put it back together.
  • Subscribe to at least one periodical – Analog – Click -  MAKE – T3 – Wired
  • Leverage other content mediums – video – photo – audio – quotes – link sharing
  • Learn something orthogonal – coder, learn to design – designer, learn to  develop
  • Explore limits of your mobile phone – extend it – more – more – yet more – still more
  • Take a class about your skill – About – Quora – SkillShare – SlideShare – Udemy – Veri – Wikipedia
  • Read one book – per week – Hugh McLeod, Seth Godin, Madeleine L’Engle & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Personal
  • Be a better listener.
  • Get sleep. Confront fears.
  • Drink more water – from the tap.
  • Become an improved public speaker.
  • Breathing warm-up via “The Breather”
  • Speaking warm-up with some phonetics
  • Be ‘cool’ to your eyes – use f.lux software
  • Turn off the TV – Streaming Video – Social Media
  • Exercise – stretch – walk – run – bike – swim – resist
  • Improve your diet. First ten – perhaps one hundred?

• Productivity
  • Close open loops
  • Review your GTD action folder – daily
  • Sprint. Use timer – online – offline – track
  • Outsource the suck. Insource the excellent.
  • Unsubscribe – to everything you don’t need – now
  • Get a network bridge – expand your room to work
  • Stop multitasking. Seriously. Right now. Stop. Please.
  • Isolate work area. Improve flow. Create tax deduction.
  • Become a better touch typist. Get your typing fu with online apps.
  • Upgrade voice recognition microphone - & adapter - less costly options

• Track
  • 10,000 hours of deliberate practice
  • Create an RSS feed that showcases your content
  • Track income - Quickbooks - or read about Quickbooks
  • Check the Google analytics for your content – every day
  • Create Google alerts to track created content in your area
  • A/B Test – Optimizely – Kissmetrics – Omniture – Bandit?
  • Use custom search engine to curate great sites and find stuff when you need it
  • Create your company – today - C-corp, S-corp, LLC, Non-Profit - get stuck - try LegalZoom
  • Use an editorial calendar - or equivalent for you – be your taskmaster – lest someone else does
  • Use metrics to evaluate reach – # retweets – # comments – number of articles with famous person

• Upgrade
  • Accelerate your life. Get an SSD.
  • Accelerate software installs - free - Ninite
  • Organizers - pens, pins, etc. - clear - black
  • Improve flow – increase your monitor workspace
  • Upgrade monitor stand - pivot, rotate, tilt, & change height
  • More monitor awesomeness for multiple computers - Synergy - free
  • Headphones – isolate the noise  - foam - rubber - over-the-ear - in-the-ear
  • Protect your work on high-powered machines (or work when the lights go out!)
  • Chrome Link Manager Extensions - Tab Split - Bookmarks - URL Grabber - ShareThis
  • 50+ more ideas for investing in producing, archiving, or sharing your created content