This month my blog officially turns 4 years old (cue the applause!).   Yes, I will admit…this is the first year that I’ve tracked metrics.  I know, I know, experts will argue that not tracking metrics from day one is a sacrilege against all core blogging norms and values.  But for the first three years it worked for me.

Initially not tracking metrics allowed me to build my following while writing what I wanted to whether one person or 100 people read it.  It gave me the space to comfortably find my voice and groove.  But in January, 2009, after I was quoted in the Huffington Post’s Complete Guide to Blogging, I decided it was time to start keeping track, and signed up for Google Analytics.

One year later, the data offer a fascinating glimpse into what resonated with you and what my goals for 2010 will be.  First, here are the top 10 blog posts for 2009:

1. Stop Talking About Work+Life Flex Solely in the Context of Women…Really, Seriously, Once and for All (10/22)

2. I am a (blank) and sometimes I put my career before my family (10/16)

3.  Getting Started with Flexible Downsizing – Manager and Employee “How To” (3/13)

4. Jack Welch is Right, “There is No Balance,” But His Reasoning Needs Updating (7/4)

5. Tame the Tween Texting Beast with Great Parent/Child Contract (10/29)

6. Personal Branding, Today and Post-Recession—Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel (3/19)

7. Work+Life Fit ‘Tipping” Point (10/8)

8. Sun-Times Column by BDO CEO and WLF–Work Life Flex Reduces Costs & Keeps Jobs (3/13)

9. Test Your Perceptions  vs. Work+Life Reality—NSCW Implications (5/4)

10. Where is Work+Life Flex on SHRM’s National Conference Agenda?  Essentially Missing. (12/18)

Here’s what I noticed and how those observations will inform what I write about in this blog and for Fast Company over the next 12 months:

Taking a break (voluntary or involuntary) can lead to better blogging. Three of the top five posts were written in October, 2009 right after I returned from an involuntary four-week blogging hiatus caused by a severe case of Lyme disease. Not only were the topics timely, but I’d given them a lot of thought while I was flat on my back recovering.

While I hope to remain healthy throughout 2010, I’m building periodic two week blogging breaks into my schedule every few months.  As one of my favorite authors, Maggie Jackson, points out in her book, Distracted, there are benefits to deep thought we need to build in to our wired world.  The evidence is in the stats above.

Direct challenges to conventional wisdom about work, life, and business get attention. If you follow my blogs, then you know that I very strongly believe that we have to stop buying into the old, tired models we’ve used to manage our lives, our work and our businesses for that last 50 years.  They just are not working anymore. As I pointed out when I relaunched my Fast Company blog in the fall, we are in a New Work+Life Flex Normal.

According to the list of top posts, you are looking for and responding to my most direct challenges to yesterday’s conventional wisdom. You want new ideas and “how to” strategies based on today’s reality.  I will continue to deliver new approaches as I find them.  And I will directly challenge the obsolete work+life status quo in 2010, because recent research released by Career Builder, Watson Wyatt and Harris Interactive confirms the prevailing post-recession state of work, life and business remains grim for many.

There are new flexible ways of operating businesses and managing life that lead to growth, innovation and improve work+life fit and performance.  I welcome your comments, links, research, and case studies.  This is a conversation we ALL need to be part of.

Basic “How to,” and “Get Started” information appreciated. Chip and Dan Heath point out in their bestseller “Made to Stick” that one of the pitfalls experts face is they forget what it’s like to be a novice.  I read their book early in 2009 and tried to be mindful to bring the strategies and concepts I discuss down to the applied basics as much as I could.

Ideas, concepts, and research are important, but at the end of the day “What’s in it for me” and “How do I do it” will win the race.  Again, in 2010, I will do my best to keep it real and applied.  Call me out as soon as I lose you for too long.  The fundamental changes we need to make collectively are not going to happen if you can’t take action based upon what you read here.

My three words for 2010 are “Help” “Thank You,” and “Reach.” For four years, this blog and my Fast Company blog have allowed me to do all three.  But this year the helping, the thanking and the reaching will be especially conscious.  If you haven’t already, please consider doing the following:

• Comment on my posts!  The conversation is always better when more people are involved.
• Sign up for the RSS Feed for this blog
• Sign up to receive weekly email links to the best of my Work+Life Fit and Fast Company posts in the above right hand corner of this page (we promise to never share your email with third party vendors)
• Follow me on Twitter @caliyost – I am always sharing real-time information related to all aspects of strategic work+life flexibility
• Tell me what you are doing, thinking, finding and I will share it as best I can.
• Let me know what else you want to learn and hear about in this blog that I’m not covering.

Finally, thank you for joining me here and at Fast Company each week.  I appreciate your interest, your commitment, your thoughts and insights.  Happy New Year!

My first post of the year was going to be my predictions for 2010.  But prognostication is a tricky business, especially this year when so many variables are in flux.   I decided to take another tack and focus on what I could control—my actions.   Specifically, what actions in 2010 that would achieve the results I wanted to see personally, professionally and culturally?  Even more specifically, what three words best embodied those conscious actions?

Three words?  My inspiration for this word-based approach came first from Seth Godin’s recently released free e-book, “What Matters Now.” It is a compilation of 50+ experts from a variety of industries and disciplines musing on a single word that’s important to them.  Then, I came across Chris Brogan’s “My 3 Words for 2010” blog post.  It turns out he has been picking three words to guide his efforts for the coming year since 2006 and has found it very powerful.

Following their lead, my three guiding words for 2010 are “Help,” “Thank You” and “Reach.”

“Help”…Preemptively

I’ve always tried to be helpful, but honestly my helpfulness was, more often than not, reactive.  If someone said they needed help, I would readily provide it.   Then, last year I began to wonder, “What if I offered my assistance proactively, before people asked?”  It started with Jonathan Fields, a career author/blogger, who signs on to his Twitter account (@jonathanfields) everyday, “Morning, great people!  Who can I help today?”

Even though I’d never met Fields, who is a “Dad, husband, author of Career Renegade, lifestyle entrepreneur, marketer, and blogger,” when his question popped up on my Twitterfeed each morning, I found it made me think differently about my day.   I’d ponder for a moment, “Yeah, who could I help?”

Then I turned thought into action.  I began to test “preemptive” helping.  Most people responded to my unsolicited offers of help with surprise and, “Thank you so much.  I can’t think of anything right now but I will let you know.”  I realized that unprompted, sincere offers of help are so rare that they caught people off guard.  But it felt great to ask, so I decided to continue, “How can I help you?”

I didn’t appreciate the lasting impact of this simple question until my friend, the Authentic Organizations management expert, CV Harquail told me what happened after I asked her, “How can I help?” a couple of months earlier.

Because CV is not only smart but very generous, it was easy at the end of our lunch two months prior to say, “How can I help you?”  While clearly surprised, she thoughtfully considered my offer and asked for my input on a couple of issues.  She thanked me.  I loved our conversation, but didn’t give it much further thought.   However, to CV, my question had become, “Cali’s killer question” (not realizing at the time that Jonathan Fields was the original inspiration).

It turns out that after our lunch, CV decided she would begin to ask others, “How can I help you?” because it had meant so much to her.   But she wasn’t prepared for the intense reaction she experienced after posing the question to a longtime colleague whom she hadn’t seen in awhile.  Toward the end of their visit, she said to him, “How can I help you?”  As she recounted to me, “He stopped.  You could tell he was shocked.  And then he began to tear up and said, ‘No one ever asks that question.’  He was visibly moved and stunned by my offer.”

I’m not the only one motivated by Jonathan Fields’ daily offering of service on Twitter.   Alexandra Levit, author and Wall Street Journal columnist wrote a piece entitled “A Habit of Generosity,” mentioning the power of Fields’ daily missive.  I couldn’t help but wonder what the world would be like if all of us started our day by asking how we can be of assistance.   Perhaps grown, successful businessmen would no longer be brought to tears by the simple question, “How can I help?”

So, wonderful readers, “How can I help you?” in 2010?  I really want to know.

“Thank You”…Concretely and “Reach”…Widely (Click here for more)