When we lived in Tanzania I would memorize poems by Mary Oliver on my walk to work every morning. So when she was quoted early on in the book The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, I took it as a good sign.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

On its surface, the premise of this book is quite simple. Twelve months is too long of a time to set realistic goals and achieve them. It’s more practical and efficient to set twelve week goals that you can then break down into weekly and daily tasks.

That alone is great and something I’ve started doing for my business.

The even bigger thing I got out of reading this book was how to think about my “vision”. I never really understood what having a vision for my business meant. I was just going along, doing the things I thought I should be doing—sending a newsletter, writing this blog, posting on LinkedIn etc. Just in the effort of “having a business.”

I had not given serious thought to what I wanted my business to be. And without doing that, without knowing what I wanted—I was never going to get it.

The 12 Week Year says, “You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. The biggest barrier to high performance is not the physical manifestation but the mental creation. You will never outpace your mental models.”

You’ll never do better than what you envision yourself doing. That’s like an automatic cap on your potential if you don’t take the time and effort to really think about what it is you want in the future.

Whoa. That was a big one for me.

While I’m not announcing any major change to Ventura Graphic Design, there might be changes on the horizon—but I’m still figuring it out.

What do I want my wild and precious life to look like, now, and in the future?

Thanks for being along for the ride. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”

― Gloria Steinem