Nothing feels better than the start of a new year — it’s fresh chance to take a look at where you’ve been and where you can go. While 2008 has been an incredible year for my business, I can only be excited at how much opportunity 2009 holds. Running a small design shop is very much a trial and error process, and I’ve already learned countless lessons from just the first 8 month of work — being able to grow, change, and adapt is one of the biggest benefits of running your own company. Here’s a short list of business related resolutions I’m working on in 2009.

Blog more, “surf” less

I spend far too much time each day dawdling around in the horse-troughs of the Internet, desperately trying to make sure I don’t let a single article or conversation about web design, business productivity, or general tech culture news drift by without at least glancing it over. Perhaps many of you have similar habits. While, I’ve become an expert at eyeballing information and telling myself it’s something noble like “market research,” really it’s just an information addiction. I’d like to quit in 2009.

The solution: blog more. I find that when I write more frequently, I can focus on understanding how I think and grow as a communicator (what designing is really all about). I also just have more fun producing rather than obsessively consuming. I’m shooting for 3 posts per week, and trying to develop my blog with some newer, more regular content features (e.g. found color, cafe reviews, site design critiques, new work case studies, tips, etc.). Should be fun.

Caring less about technology

Going along with the above resolution, I’m trying to distance my attention from the tech/web community just a bit, to keep my head clear and focused on my business. With so much stuff constantly floating around (new text editors, personal information managers, scm tools, css tricks, etc), it’s easy to get lost in caring about piddly little tools we all use everyday, instead of actually getting work done.

I’ve been using my current set of apps and tools for over 2 years. They all work great, and my workflow is a smooth as it’s ever been. If something new comes along that can really help my process, I’ll no doubt hear about it from a friend, and add it to my process if it helps. But spending any part of my day demoing new apps just to kick their tires seems like a total waste of time. Shiny new toys are fun, but the glare is distracting.

Out of my head

There are three places where ideas can live — in your head, written down, or actualized. Making ideas real is of course the best situation (“real artists ship” and all that), but I have far more ideas than time to realize everything. Writing things down though, and organizing them in a meaningful way, helps keep you mind calm and stress free. Even better, the process of collecting, organizing, and refining your ideas is the best way develop great new work — everything good needs a little time to marinate.

All my ideas go into a Backpack idea page, and the best one get a page of their own. Only the best, most interesting and developed ideas see the light of day, and I don’t worry about the 100 things I could do, if only I had more time.

Side projects

Going along with the goal of developing my ideas into living, breathing projects — I plan to finally kick into high gear and develop some long marinating ideas for web sites and web apps. I plan to launch two small, micro apps in the first half of 2009, as well as working on launching a few mini-magazine style websites with friends. I’ll no doubt mention all these new ideas here on the blog.

A huge part of going into business on my own was the opportunity to work on my own projects — now that I work full-time there are no excuses. Expect some fun projects this year.

Promote

I’m not very natural at self-promotion, but it’s essential to running a great business. Promoting yourself and your business is really just about being a great, persistent communicator. At this point in my life, I’m convinced that a good designer who can speak and write well will always be more successful and happier than someone who can’t communicate their work to others.

The best part about promotion is that it’s a skill that’s easy to use with practice — the more you do, the more you grow. Writing more here on my blog is of course the most obvious step in promoting my company more. I’d like to take things further, and speak at more small conferences. If anyone reading is looking for speakers for 2009, I’d love to talk — speaking at Refresh last year was a very satisfying, exciting experience and I’d love to refine that presentation this year.

That’s all folks

Here’s to a great 2009! Happy new year.