For the last few years I have chosen a word at the beginning of January designed to keep me honest and on track with my goals. I’m honest by nature so that wasn’t very challenging on it’s own and when it comes to accomplishing certain goals, I’m not sure they worked as well as I’d hoped.

So I’ve decided for 2012 that I need to get more specific and slightly boring about it.

I need a workhorse of a word to slog through the details that I hate. I need a better plan, one with more details and end dates otherwise I drift a bit too much in whatever direction I want to go for the day. Too many projects and nothing gets completed so I need a way to break it down.

Being naturally tangential can be great for ‘big picture’ people like me, but bad if you don’t have a team to share the detail work with. It’s all up to me what happens this year and I’d like to get a few more things done.

There’s nothing glamorous about this year’s word. It’s fairly boring like brushing your teeth or paying your bills on time … two areas that can’t be neglected without some obvious consequences.

The word I’ve chosen for 2012 is : DAILY – occurring, made, or acted upon every day

Because I tend to use mnemonic devices to remember things, I thought of a way to make my word ‘Daily’ even more useful to me. By breaking it down into the five letters that make up the word, I can assign a letter to each digit on my hand.

Here’s an example of why I need a little more help staying focused. When I looked at my hands and counted out D-A-I-L-Y, I was reminded of how rough my hands look most days. Due to loads of hand washing, (I’m germ conscious, but not obsessed) and not enough hand lotion use, I’ve always thought that my age was more obvious on the backs of my hands than on my face.

That belief may be changing soon as my face seems to be catching up, but I’m okay with that. I’ve got more important things to focus on than worrying about getting older, something that I’ve considered a privilege since my early 30s and even more so now as I see more people my age and younger dying too soon.

See what I mean about my tangential thinking needing help to focused … I started with a simple task assignment beginning with my thumb and the letter D and the next thing you know, my mind has moved on to aging and early death. That’s how it happens for me, one minute I’m here and the next I’m on to something else.

Which leads me to the DAILY five.

Here’s the short version.

D – Diet: My daily diet needs to be better, less sugar and more fruit & veg.

A – Appreciate: This one’s not usually an issue for me, but I want to be sure others in my
life feel it by being less distracted when I’m with them.

I – Imagine: I want to keep dreaming the big dreams. I love living with possibility.

L – Listen:  I have got to get better with this. I still talk way too much sometimes.

Y – Yield: The return on my investment of time, energy, and emotion, and is it worth it?

I’m keeping it simple to stay focused and hopefully it will be as easy as a DAILY wave of my hand.

How about you … any words or links to words of your own for 2012?