Kris D'Amico Photography

December 31st, 2009 by Kris

From Seth Godin’s Blog this morning.

“A friend worried out loud to me the other day, “I spent the last seven months doing this [job] and I have nothing to show for it. If I had known I would have spent seven months and gotten nothing, you can bet I would have done something a lot more fun.”

Ten years ago I wrote this post about the decade that ends today.

The oughts (the “uh-ohs”?) were a tough decade on a macro level. Front page news events will give the textbooks plenty to write about in the years to come.

But on a micro level, on a personal level, this was a decade filled with opportunity. The internet transformed our lives forever. Opportunities were created (and many were taken advantage of). And, like every decade, just about everyone missed it. Just about everyone hunkered down and did their job or did what they were told or did what they thought they were supposed to, and just about everyone got very little as a result.

Maybe ten years is too long a period of time to plan for. So how about seven?

Seven years from now, what will you have to show for what you’re doing right now?

If your answer is, “not much,” perhaps you should consider a new plan, one that might generate a different answer, or, at the very least, be a more fun way to waste seven years.”

Read the original here.

So, what do you think? I’ve been working on my 2010 marketing plan over the last 3 weeks. I heard a talk from the girls over at Fresh Dirt Marketing here in Nashville and it made me realize that I had no real plan in place, so I made one. Well, like most of us, I’m still working on it.

I say this to reinforce what Seth’s saying here, maybe ten years is too long. Seven year goals or even four year goals may be the way to plan. If they are set too low then you’ve got a tighter timeline to achieve, if they are good and lofty (as they probably should be) they may need to roll over into the next 4 year goal period.

Have a great new years and plan well.