Nigerian Entrepreneur

The year 2010 has been a wonderful year for me as an entrepreneur. Even though I didn’t quite achieve all that I set out to achieve during the year, I must confess that I have several reasons to be grateful to God for His generosity. I must also appreciate you my fans, friend and readers of this blog for your support, especially those of you that drop comments and contribute to discussions on this blog (No thanks to the human and auto-bot spammers for increasing the time I spend moderating).

This year, I wrote fewer articles because of my preoccupation with offline activities, yet this blog enjoyed more visit than it ever had in the previous years. There was increase in overall exposure and I had quite a good number of offers from individual and corporate organizations asking requesting that I partner with them in one venture or the other. For all those offers, I am grateful.

What Has 2010 been like?

As an Entreprenuer, it is that time of the year that one need to take stock of the performance so far. Several questions runs through my mind. You can guess what some of them are. What progress has been made? What goals have been achieved? What lofty ideas were abandoned because of poor implementation? What did I do wrong? What could I have done better?

As these questions and thoughts fly around my mind, it became obvious that I needed the aid of pen and paper to get my thought sorted out. However, it wasn’t long before I discovered that that wasn’t just enough. The mind is a wonderful machine with ceaseless torrents of ideas, questions and suggestions. I needed something better than paper and pen to do my constructive brainstorming.

Brainstorming with FreeMind (an Open Source Alternative to Mind Manager)

Thank God for open source software. I had downloaded FreeMind, an Open Source alternative to the popular Mind Manager.  I used it to put down each flying thought, idea, questions and suggestion. It was easy arranging my thought and establishing connection between one idea and another to see what the overall picture looks like. It was much more better than using a paper and pen.

Meanwhile, I have also used the FreeMind to build a complex diagram of what my life really look like. It is really stunning to see how complicated it really is. I thought I live a simple life, but the diagram shows that what I consider simple is actually complicated and it requires carefulness to maintain a balance. I am actually using that diagram as a foundation for writing up my goals for the year 2011.

Plan to Live A Balance Life In the Year 2011

One of the lessons I learned this year is that every goal you set for yourself, whether business or personal must aligned with your ultimate goal in life. It is foolish to set goals that contradict what your ultimate goal in life is. Let me explain with an example. An entrepreneur set the goal of having a certain amount of money in his bank account at the close of business on 21st  December, 1996. His plan was to spend some of the  money to give his family a one week treat at one the exclusive holiday resort. Unfortunately, when he got home on the 22nd of December, 1996, there was nobody at home. He discovered a divorce letter on the dinning table, it was dated 16th December, 1996! His spouse and children were gone. They were tired of his continuous absence from home and his continual neglect of  the family.  It was a total disaster, because the man had sacrificed a bigger and more important goal for a smaller one. What a disaster! That entrepreneur failed to set his priority aright. He failed to balance his goals!

Each of us need to set goals for the various nodes that makes up different areas of our lives (spiritual, health, financial, social, etc). Ensure that the goals are not conflicting with your ultimate goal or purpose in life.  Give priority to relationships above material acquisition. I’m not just talking, I’m working on my goals for 2011. Not an easy task I must confess, but I’ve learned that he who fails to set goals and plan for their achivement is merely existing like a rock! So I’m not going to abandon the task. Success don’t just happen. Success occurs when someone set goal, plan and work towards it’s achivement. If nothing has thought me that this is true, this blog has done just that.

So, my suggestion to you is that as you celebrate this festive season, don’t forget to take stock of your performance in the year 2010.  Ensure you show appreciation to all those that have contributed to your success, business and personal, so far. Then sit down and sincerely decide what you want in the year 2011. Decide and plan to be a major league player in the year 2011, don’t settle for the position of a spectator! See you at the top. Cheers 😉

Tags: balance life, Entrepreneur, Family, goals, New Year, Open source, performance, plan, priority, stock taking, Success

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 30th, 2010 at 11:47 am and is filed under Blogging, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.