Brad Feld wrote a post encouraging people not to post “2009 Predictions” or “2008 Year in Review” posts…I agree with him. I commented…

Brad- On the whole I completely agree, however, I will say that looking back on the year past is a good exercise if you do it with the attitude of, “what can we learn from 2008″. I always think its a good idea to look backward for lessons and forward for opportunities.

So, here are 3 lessons I learned. Please share your lessons from 2008 in the comments, I’d love to benefit from your experiences.

Lessons

1) Find out what is important and keep it close. I got engaged on Dec 26th and with the wide spread pessimism in the economy and around the world, I couldn’t feel any more optimistic about my future with the future Mrs. Graves.

2) If something motivates you, do it. One of the hardest things to find is passion and motivation in your professional life. If you stumble across something you enjoy that is motivating, then chase after it fervently. This world would be a lot better off if people did more things they enjoy and the likelihood of success is much higher if you enjoy your work.

3) Make the social web real. I’ve spent the last 6 months making a concerted effort to meet people in real life or over the phone from Twitter. There are more and more amazingly talented people joining the social web everyday making it more and more powerful. To fully take advantage of that power you’ve got to make web connections become real relationships.