Year End Review
[00:00:00] Joe Miller: Hey, welcome friends. Listen, I'm dropping in here. Give you some tactics. I don't know how well the old, typical new year's resolution works for you, but I've done this a number of years and There's some value to it, but I think over time, I think most of us would agree it's of limited use to help you really gain traction and move forward towards your vision and your goals, long-term goals.
So anyway, I'm a fan of Tim Ferris and I noticed he had a blog entry recently. He has this process called year-end review, which I'm using this year. And I think it's a lot better. I think it really provides some. Great insights to help us all make better choices in the coming year to make sure that we're really on our journey towards our vision for our lives and [00:01:00] our purpose rather than just throwing some goals up. I just don't think that they new year's resolutions works that well for most people, at least that's what I've heard and that's been my experience. So, here's how it works. So you can go to tim.blog and look for his entry for year-end review. Here's the process you go through and re you reviewed, get your calendar out for last year, if it's online or paper and just go scan through week by week and look at those activities, those interactions with people that really were high points for you, things you remembered in a very positive way.
So, you just highlight those things, jot them down. That's the way I did it. I have my week's going down and I took notes gone down off to the side and the plus column, if you will. And just notate them go through the entire year. And then these things.
You want to treat as the pareto principle, what are the [00:02:00] 20% of all those positive experiences you had for the entire year that you really want to lean into for this upcoming year? And once you've identified that block of items then what you do. And this technique I have found to be extremely valuable is get those intentions that 20%.
Where you want to focus those people, you want to be with, those organizations, you want to align with those commitments. you want to hold and put them in your calendar. Now go ahead and program them in now. So, for me, for example, now that I'm in the retirement mode, Encore career, one of the things I am going to be intentional about is blocking time out to just enjoy myself.
Just so I don't let my podcasting and other activities take control my entire calendar. And it feels like I'm back to the. The career [00:03:00] job that I spent 40 years working in. So, block those in first, put those important blocks into your calendar. Maybe it's a weekly point of view, a weekly commitment. I think that's a cadence that really makes good sense these days.
Or maybe, you have commitments there monthly. I have a couple of calls that I host on a monthly basis. Zoom calls. And they're really important to me. I get a lot of joy out of doing those things. So, I'm putting them in calendar right now. The other thing you do after you've completed that step, do the positive stuff first.
Then the next thing you do is you go back through your calendar and you look at those negative areas, those things that were drains, either people you're like, ah, they just drain my energy, or things commitments you have made. And they're just. Not in alignment with where you're headed, take those things, notate them, and then they become actions and they become items on your [00:04:00] not to do list.
You can't really make a lot of traction towards the things that are important for you until you also identify what you're not going to spend your time in because what'll happen is all those other things will invade the available time that you have. And steal it away from the things you want to do.
You can't say yes to things until you also say notice some other things. So, I've got a number of things on the list of things that I have been thinking about. I don't know how well they serve me and that I've just decided they don't serve me. I don't know why I'm keeping them on there. Maybe, sometimes I think it's almost like buyer's remorse, it's you don't want to admit that you are holding onto something.
This is not serving you and your life's direction. So, what do we do? Rather than admit it, we keep it in there. And as long as we keep it in there, it steals time. Energy and focus away from the things that are really important to us. So not to do list. So that's the [00:05:00] second part of it.
I've already gone through this process. Got the positive things identified, blocking them into my calendar. I'm still doing some of that work but done the big parts of that. I've identified those things that I want to unwind get rid of, say no to it can be commitments or people I'm doing that.
I'm feeling a lot better about this process. It also lines up pretty well with some of the, life planning Approaches that I have used in the past that I've done on an annual basis as well. And I think. I'm going to be able to integrate that life planning and career planning process together into this year-end tactic that Tim Ferriss has put forth.
So anyway, give it a shot. I will include a link to Tim's blog entry to give you a little bit more specificity around the process and the background as to why he uses it but hope this serves you well.
Okay, guys look forward to bringing some more information to you. Hopefully this [00:06:00] is helpful. Send me back comments and let me know what you'd like to hear as well. Like things you're struggling with that maybe I can throw my 2 cents in on. Thanks a lot.