Welcome to 2017. (We better have flying cars by 2020 or I’m going to be pissed.)

I found the following chart on Howard Lindzon’s blog. It’s called “The Emotional Journey Of Creating Anything Great" and it’s getting shared around town right now.

I’m sure that you’ve seen other similar charts before, but it doesn’t hurt to drive home this point, particularly as all of us kickstart the new year and promise ourselves that we’re going to be better, faster, stronger.

The point of this chart is that when you’re creating anything new and great, there will always be the period of time that this diagram refers to as the “dark swamp of despair.” This is where you question your life decisions and wonder if you’re wasting your time trying to create this new and great thing.

I never fully appreciated this phenomenon until I worked on a startup. Though for me, it felt more like a manic depressive rollercoaster. One week I was killing it and the next week I was in a dark swamp of despair searching for a way out. 

And it’s because when you’re creating something new, you have few, if any, points of reference to reassure yourself that you’re on the right path. If it is truly great, then it’s probably something novel. And if it’s new, then by definition it hasn’t been done before. So it is unknown whether it’s truly a dark swamp of despair or if it just feels that way right now because things are tough.

Because of the emotional nature of this journey, I have found myself really questioning the worth of things like caffeine and alcohol. I used to think the former made me more productive – the latter certainly doesn’t – but I’m not so sure that is the case. So as an experiment, I cut out coffee last month.

I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions, so that’s not what all of this is about. It’s far better to talk about the things you’ve remained committed to, than to talk about the things you’re planning to do.

This is simply a reminder that there will always be ups and there will always be dark swamps of despair. The key is to have the confidence and conviction to charge through those swamps any way you can. Onward my friends. I’m really looking forward to 2017 and I hope you all are as well.

I’m not a huge believer in new year’s resolutions, as I much prefer the idea of continuous goal setting and improvement. But I like Mark Zuckerberg’s tradition of pursuing one “personal challenge” every year. One year it was to learn Mandarin. And this year it was to build a personal artificial intelligence tool. If you’re interested in AI, you can learn about the experience and his takeaways in this post.

I am definitely interested in AI, but right now I’m actually thinking about his approach to personal challenges. This is a time of year when many of us are looking back at what we accomplished over the last 12 months and thinking about what we would like to accomplish in the next 12 months, as well as beyond. I know that I was doing some of that this past weekend. 

I managed to check off many/most of the items on my 2016 list, but full disclosure: some of them are getting punted to 2017. I also modified certain items. I originally wanted BARED (Becoming A Real Estate Developer) to be a book, but instead it transformed into a new blog series. My most recent BARED post can be found, here.

However, as I look back at all of the lists I’ve been making, I realize that virtually all of the goals are work related. They’re about completing this, growing that, and so on. That’s obviously important, but what about personal growth? Sure, one could argue that learning Mandarin is actually a prudent business move, but Zuckerberg claims to have been motivated more by personal reasons. And that’s great.

So I’m revisiting my lists and thinking about ways in which I can challenge myself to grow not just as a professional, but also as a person. Right away, photography comes to mind as an obvious personal challenge, but I’d like to give it a bit more thought. If Mark Zuckerberg can find the time, then there’s no reason that you and I can’t as well.

Do you have your own set of lists that you keep?