This is the best time of the year for almost all to reflect upon the year that was and look forward to what’s in store for the new year.
I learnt an excellent technique of the past year review by Tim Ferrris (www.tim.blog) which i’ll be sharing here (this exercise will take upto 30 mins).
Step 1
Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2019. These are the people and things you know make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense.
That’s it! If you try it, let me know how it goes.
And just remember: it’s not enough to remove the negative. That simply creates a void. Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP, lest they get crowded out by the bullshit and noise that will otherwise fill your days. Good luck and godspeed!
Step 2
Make a list of all that you want to CREATE and write it as if you already have it.
That’s it ! Do these two steps and you’ll have a great kickstart to the new year.
Love,
Yayati Desai