Every month I review my goals and reflect on my progress, practices, and mindset. Looking back, I note that in 7 of the 9 last months, I was pretty disappointed in myself. There were always lots that wasn't going to plan. Everything always took longer to finish than I’d expected.
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But I also do a quarterly review. I ask myself ~the same questions as in the monthly reflections, but over a longer time horizon. Looking back now, I see that in 3 of the 4 last quarters, I’d been thrilled (and surprised) by how much I’d achieved and how well things were going!
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One common pattern each quarter: “3 months ago, I wasn’t even thinking about XYZ, but now I’ve done XYZ++!”
It’s odd that my quarterly reflections are so consistently bright, while my monthly reflections are so consistently glum. I’m not sure how to explain this contradiction!
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Many rightly asked: so why do the monthly reviews? Unfortunately, they also yield useful insights! e.g. I might reflect that I'm spending too much time on "duty," and I'll plan some changes to try in the next month. I think it's the evaluative, KPI-ish stance I need to drop.
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Can you plz write a medium.com blog post about this, like how do you plan, what questions do you ask
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I would love to adopt a similar review system! Do you mind sharing more about the method or systems you have in place to facilitate the review?
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I'll make a tiny pitch for my app complice.co here: it has week-scale & month-scale reviews, with customizable per-goal Qs.
I've been meaning to add quarterly... wouldn't be that hard—tell you what, if you check out the app, I'll add it!🙃
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Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean and @QiaochuYuan
Indeed, I really enjoyed how Complice emphasized intentions rather than tasks! Lots of thoughtful design notions there.
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I’ve found months to be too short to achieve meaningful goals, have broken year down into 7 x 7 week sprints, normally final week is wind down + planning for next sprint. Then 3 weeks end of year to chill and plan following year. Working reasonably well for me.
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really interesting. Worth keeping in mind so we can buffer any monthly disappointment
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Yeah, or do quarterly instead 😛
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But I also do a quarterly review. I ask myself ~the same questions as in the monthly reflections, but over a longer time horizon. Looking back now, I see that in 3 of the 4 last quarters, I’d been thrilled (and surprised) by how much I’d achieved and how well things were going!
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I do weekly/monthly reviews and see the same trend. I would say, in my case, shorter periods hurts retrospective abilities. Weeks are too short and the focus is in the now, and now varies a lot. Monthly gives me the opportunity to reflect deeper.
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My explanation to myself (borrowing Taleb's idea of the Noise Bottleneck): Like the Market, if you check it every day you are going to see/feel the ups and downs, but if you check on it in larger time spans you'll see the trends...
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