It's the start of January and I'm already giving my motto for next year some thought. It's simply a theme that you keep true to for the next year of your life. It's a simple core goal to stick to for a year. I only started this when I was 35 so my mottos list is short for the moment.

I got the idea from Buster Benson, who does his mottos from his birthday, but I prefer the idea of starting it at the start of the year. My birthday is in February anyway, so it's not too far off.

Last year's motto was Be Independent:

My way of defining career independence is to be an independent developer. Simple. I want to ultimately pick and choose the work that I want to do in the future. I want to be independent of another company’s goals and objectives and work towards my goals.

It didn't go completely to plan on all aspects of being independent, but the key success from this was that I am steadily becoming financially independent. With my freelance work, I'm forced to consider budgets carefully, look for ways of being more productive with my time and of course accumulating a safety cushion should I get stuck for work. This mostly went well apart from building products to supplement my income.

So what about next year then? Well, one thing from this year was definitely clear. I budgeted my time poorly when it came to side projects and products. A list of ideas is still sitting on the sideline. I worked a lot this year, but I didn't take anytime to develop anything for myself.

So with this in mind, I'm thinking of setting the motto for next year as Smarter Budgeting.

This isn't just a time thing for completing products. I want to budget time for not just products, but also cycling, reading and of course spending time with my family. I just got my mountain bike back from our local bike shop and I'm itching to get back out on the trails, especially in the winter when the braes at the back of my house get a slight dusting of snow.

Over the next couple of weeks, some thought will be given to how I work towards this motto and some daily changes that will need to be made.