Brother -
This past week many corporate employees had the week off, or better said - a week with no meetings.
I talked with one of my colleagues, who said that it's amazing the brain space that opened up for him even after two days. Essentially it creates the ability for long-term high-value thinking vs. reactive task-like meetings. We can get out of the daily grind and start to see things from a higher level.
Time is our most valuable resource we allocate from one day to the next. You'll see that we are often too quick to say yes to things and not proactive enough to slot in the more significant items we really want.
Show me your calendar, and I will tell you what your priorities are.
My friends and I did an exercise this week called a 'Prior Year Review' that I learned about from Tim Ferriss. You go through your calendar week by week and write out the positives and negatives that gave you highs and lows throughout the year. These could be people, activities, or commitments you made.
By the end of the 30-minute exercise, you have a list of around 20 items in the positive and negative columns. From there, you look at the ones that gave you the highest highs and the lowest lows and draw out your themes to inform your 2021 planning.
Essentially what are the items you want to do more of or less of? They can be big and obvious things like traveling with friends. Or small and random such as 'learning about bitcoin' or finding a consistent hairdresser to avoid bad haircuts... which is, unfortunately, one of mine.
For me, there were some clear peaks, such as coming home for long periods in the summer and Thanksgiving. Meditating daily, and then building weight training into my morning routine with a friend. Also, journaling with Katia, which later turned into this newsletter.
On the downside, it revolved around work - and not flexing my 'integrity bank' more. In short, I took too many late-night meetings or meetings with people and teams I simply don't like meeting with.
My ask to you is to try this exercise. 2020 is a year unlike any other, and if you don't take the time to reflect, you'll miss out on some valuable learnings to carry forward with you into the next year and beyond.
Let me leave you with a quote and a question.
"Don't prioritize your schedule. Schedule your priorities."
-Stephen Covey
What are your positive and negative themes from your 'Prior Year Review'?
Enjoy the dance,
Nate