365

I’m a big fan of New Years… stuff. In years past I’ve come up with many goals, plans and resolutions, which I’ve also kept (!!!) to varying degrees.

This year I wanted to do something a bit different. I wanted to come up with something I could do on an ongoing basis that kept me engaged, learning and thinking about ways to be better. I started making a list of some “guiding principles” I wanted to keep in mind, not only for 2013, but daily. I looked at this and thought about it for a long time, trying to figure out something actionable I could do with it.

I came up with a project that, as of right now, doesn’t really have a name. (Maybe I’ll call it “365”.) I’ve been hosting it over at dangerismyfirstname.com (that domain is to awesome to waste) and been working on it pretty much daily for the last month.

The idea is to share one interesting thing every day. Of course, that alone would be pretty boring, so I wanted to add a bit of a twist. So I turned it into a daily design exercise where I’d design a new, fun and unique way to present these interesting things every day. This gives me the variety to do lots of different things, but also a narrow enough scope to keep manageable. Simple, yet infinitely complex.

In a way I’m making slides and publishing to the web every day. For 365 days.

For example, today I posed those principles as one of my entries.

I decided to use a service, Nubook, that provides hundreds of simple yet customizable templates. I’m hoping this saves me some time in production, but it also presents some interesting problems. It’s working with templates, after all. Then again, these limitations and constraints are part of the challenge, I have to think around them, and that gets my mind working.

But the real trick is simply coming up with something to publish every day and keep it fun and interesting all year long. Especially on those days when my energy is low or time is tight. I really want to try and do this every single day, but I’m not holding myself to that. I’m more worried about keeping the streak alive than I am about the daily exercise.

It’s been harder than I’d thought, but so far, so good. I’ve been trying to do this daily, and every once in awhile do an extra or two to fill in for days I’m just not feeling it.

It takes a bit of discipline, but my hope is that it’ll turn into a habit. You know that one good habit will turn into more, right? Regardless, it’s been a great way to get me in a mindset for work, creating and learning. And a bit of fun as well.

Give it a look. I hope you find something interesting there, and by all means, let me know what you think. :)