reflection on my 2017 personal retreat

earlier this week i completed my third personal reflection retreat. the roadmap for it is over here so i’m not gonna rehash that in this post. this post is just general thoughts, what went well, and what i think would make it better next year.

general thoughts

i love doing this. why don’t they teach people to do stuff like this in school or religion or other cultural institutions? maybe they do and i missed it. anyway, having three (mostly) offline days to look back and plan for the year just felt really good.

as always, i was surprised at how much happens in a calendar year. the process of building my 52 weekly summaries highlights from my calendar just how much i did and time i spent. i always see stuff that i forgot happened and i’m continually reminded about the first thing on gretchen rubin’s habit manifesto: what you do regularly matters more than what you do once in a while.

this might sound corny, but i feel like a new person with an entirely new set of possibilities after reviewing what happened last year. i think this is because i had no idea what was possible in 2016 when i did my jan 2016 retreat. and then looking back on the year from now it’s like… well if that’s what happened based on what i thought would happen, who knows what could happen this year?

what went well (+s)

• free housing (was house-sitting for friends in central square)
• prepping agenda beforehand
• had company (spencer) visiting from the uk which both helped keep me focused and also made for good breaks
• finalizing a draft of my infinite growth vision statement supported my planning for 2017 so much; it’s so crazy that we walk around the world without compasses
• marking a whole day to do project launch prep work was great
  

what could’ve been better (∆s)

• i didn’t disconnect from my cell phone; this cost me lots of focus
• didn’t get to everything
• every year i’ve felt like i want more time and this year was the same; next year (assuming i make it that far) i’ll do four days
• would have been nice to have prepped my budget review beforehand (maybe on dec 31st?)