“Pause. reflect. turn the chaos into insight" - Futurist Jim Carroll
I've always liked the idea of starting to focus my mindset as a new year approaches. Given that it is only a few weeks away, I thought now might be as good a time as any!
With that in mind, starting next Monday, November 25, I'll be launching here in my Daily Inspiration a series that will carry us through to January 1: "25 Things I've Learned That Will Carry Me into 2025: A Motivational Trend Series." You'll find the series unfolding at 2025.jimcarroll.com; it will also become the focus of my Daily Inspiration each day up until and including January 1, 2025.
I've done this before. Last year, I rolled out my '24 Strategies for 2024" series in the same way, and the entire series still resides at 2024.jimcarroll.com.
In 2023, I took a different approach, with a series of 23 Trends for 2023 that started with this post.
Back in 2019? In December of that year, I started putting together my Insight 2020 video series together, with a video post related to every theme each day. That's here. That's summarized at https://jimcarroll.com/category/insight-2020/
Check the first item in the series - "Check your speed!" Little did I know the speed at which organizations and people would need to adapt just a few months later as the global pandemic began to unfold!
In other years, I approached the forthcoming New Year with my "words" or "phrases" for the coming year, such as a post, "10 Phrases that Define 2022."
This method of pausing and thinking about the forthcoming year goes way back to 2006 when I wrote my original 10 Great Words outline in December 2005,
These became a PDF and material I used to close many of my keynotes on stage - and are summarized at https://10greatwords.jimcarroll.com. There's also a PDF on that page that is a great summary of forward-oriented thinking.
Not only that, but I've kept the 10 Great Words tradition going through many years, including 2023:
and again for 2024.
What's the point of all this?
I've always found it useful to take a moment to pause, reflect, and come up with some strategies for the year to come. Given the likely volatility in what comes next, I've decided to take an approach this year that will offer up my thoughts with "25 Things I've Learned That Will Carry Me into 2025." I have no idea what I am going to write about; I have yet to define my list - but that will unfold in the days to come.
Stay tuned!
Futurist Jim Carroll has long found it helpful to approach each new year with a mental map of how he will approach the new year.