2019 annual reflection review: part 1, 2, 3, 4

15 Mar 2019

i realized yesterday that i hadn’t written much about my annual reflection process. i wrote one post but it’s more notes for me than anything. it’s time to say some more, especially since that maureen and i are planning an annual retreat called 2020vision for next year (more info coming soon on that so email me if you’re interested).

i don’t know if i’ll end up writing five posts about it like i did last year, but right now i’m feeling the desire to break my thoughts up into process and content. i think for now i’ll just “bullet” things and maybe do more narrative weaving later.

process

• this year, it worked out for me to rent a friend’s apartment while he was traveling. ideally, i would have gone away from the city but this situation was just working out too well. my dream is to go away to a beautiful, quiet, natural place for my annual reflection retreat and the minimum requirement is that i just not be at home. i need to be in a different space so that i don’t/can’t get distracted by little things that break up my spaciousness (like chores i’ve put off for a long time and now that i have four days, decide to do and eat up hours of my reflecting time). it’s just a bonus if the space is beautiful and natural.

• around october 2018, i picked my retreat dates. that’s the point at which i had enough clarity about what my january was going to look like to feel good about choosing dates.

• i started building a list of things to do in my phone/computer apple notes app basically as soon as i finished my retreat (january 2018 when i reflected on 2017). as i thought of or saw ideas for activities to do on retreat that would be helpful to my reflecting and planning, i added them to the notes file. i knew that this would create more things to do than i could ever have time for, but i wanted to have a full menu of things to chose from.

• the week before my retreat, i started to narrow down what things i felt needed to get done on retreat, what things would be nice to do, and what things just probably wouldn’t happen.

—[end writing 15 march]—

—[begin writing 16 march]—

• i packed up the day before just as if i was going on a trip. full suitcase and everything. i committed to not going home because that felt important to hold the container for myself.

content

• i had a MASSIVE list of activities to choose from. i knew it couldn’t possibly finish it all, but that wasn’t the point. at the time of the retreat, i didn’t have them categorized but in hindsight, i think the categories (each of which may have had 1-15 specific tasks) were:
  • review time spent
  • review money spent
  • review my systems, tools, and frameworks (bullet journal, calendar systems, friend zones, etc)
  • cleaning and maintenance of said systems
  • plan for personal and professional development
  • plan for community engagement
  • build my shadow calendar (which includes making phone calls to my zone 1 folks)
  • ideate and launch projects i have been blocked on
  • update protocols and practices based on everything implemented so far

—[end writing mar 16]—

—[begin writing mar 17]—

what i actually did

so based on all the categories above and subtasks under each, here’s a rundown of what i actually did. “did” in this context includes things i completed as well as tasks i started and didn’t complete. i include time estimates because i think it’s helpful info. but note they are actually estimates.

• reviewing
  • review time spent
    • my (at this point) standard calendar review process (see “part 1: review and reflect” of this post) (8h)
  • review money spent (3h)
  • review systems, tools, and functional life frameworks (2h)
• reflecting
  • reflect on vision and values statement (where am i living into it? where am i not yet?) (2h + all over the place)
• planning
  • bullet journal (3h)
  • update friend zones (2h)
  • create new shadow calendar (4h)
  • plan for community engagement (6h)
    • ideate and launch new or previously blocked projects
  • personal and professional development (3h)
    • scheduling two book editing weeks
    • scoping meditation retreats and other retreats
    • researching trainings
  • update protocols and practices (1h)
  • budget (1h)

—[end march 17 writing]—

—[begin march 21 writing]—

and some just some reflections on the process as a whole this year.

i like…

• the amount of money i spent on housing for the retreat. the ratio of getting what i needed to what i spent felt great.
• how many community engaging things i took some steps towards making happened. the list is actually quite epic:
  • men’s circle (bell hooks six elements of love?) (lead)
  • moon circles (lead)
  • 1:1s w/ one teacher (participant)
  • post-patriarchy futures (co-lead)
  • big talk x msg (co-lead)
  • queer movie night (co-lead)
  • dusp ptop #2 (potential facilitator)
• the insights i gain from spending an entire day thinking about how i used my time in

i wish…

• i had put more time and energy into my budgeting processes.
• i had put more time into nailing down my shadow calendar.
• i hadn’t launched so many projects! i think i am too good at that.
• i had spent more time reflecting on the tools and systems i use.
• i spent more time reviewing the goals i set in my august 2018 retreat and setting new goals for 2019.

therefore, next year…

• i need to do more prep work for my budgets before retreat or i need to make more time and space for that chunk.
• i would like start reflecting with my woes in december so that when we talk in january, we can nail things down for my shadow calendar during my retreat week. i would also like set a specific day that i’ll call them so i can make sure we all connect and i can finish the whole thing.
• i will find way to narrow down the projects i will launch. maybe i’ll plan to do half of what’s in the potential set of ideas or something…
• i will spend more time review my tool stack, fixing it up, and getting rid of tools i no longer need.
• i will make setting goals a more explicit part of the process. and i mean identity based goals (like james clear talks about), not outcome-based goals. the outcomes follow from the identity shifts.

---

phew! i guess i did end up writing ~4/5 posts about my retreat (just like last year, lol). this time i just kept adding to the same post instead of starting a new one each day.

anywho, given that this is the fourth, it means the next one i write will be the one that is parallel to my “be a conduit” (and other phrases/mantras for 2018) post. coming right up…

—[end march 21 writing]—

words / writing / post-processing
(401+128+151+404)w / (11+10+12+16)min / (10+4+8+8)min