Letter 004 - Tactics: "Press Pause Summit"
You are responsible for carving time to reflect and think about what you will (and will not) do going forward.
Disclaimer: since this is only the fourth “issue”, I want to remind you of one of my principles for Exonomist — minimal-to-no copy editing. To that end, what you’re about to read was written in one go on my couch in ATL.
“Strategy is about choice.” — Steve Goldbach, Chief Strategy Officer of Deloitte (and a total badass btw).
When it comes to your goals, you just cannot do everything under the sun. For most of my life, I was the king of having too many damned goals. Looking at my “prioritized goals” list from 5 years ago makes me physically put both of my hands over my face (damn, smudged my glasses when I did that).
If you want to actually achieve anything, you have to be deliberate about what you are not going to do, too. This takes some processing space / thinking time. Which leads me to two questions for you:
Speaking of thinking time, how many hours have you spent in meetings over the last month? The last three months? The last year? OK, great. Remember that number…
How many hours did you spend in a meeting that you scheduled with you and only you? I’m going to guess for most of us the answer is, “I don’t know” or “not nearly as much as I would have liked.”
Just like you might attend a multi-hour meeting or all-day/multi-day conference to dive deep and learn, you should consider setting up your own “Press Pause Summit.” This is your time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve discovered and learned, and what you might want to achieve in the next _______(week, month, year, years). This is when I go from simply making choices about my areas of focus, to having conviction around said areas of focus.
Below is a sample agenda for my latest “Press Pause” summit. If you have a different way you do this, I’d love to hear it! There are countless ways to structure this exercise.
Michael
PRESS PAUSE SUMMIT - SAMPLE AGENDA:
Note: my process is particularly intensive (read: probably overwhelming for many of folks), but I’ve learned that the intensity helps to keep my brain focused on this very important exercise, and not on the thousand other things going on in my life.
5-10 Minutes - Expectation Setting with Others: make sure the people around you know that you’re going to be MIA for a little bit of time. Turn off your notifications. Shut off your e-mail. If you can, try to leave electronics in a place that are hard to access / check.
30 minutes - Rebaseline: go on a walk, don’t listen to anything, just observe the world around you.
10 minutes — Meditation: I do ~5 minutes of deep breathing….But only after I’ve overcome being distracted by a squirrel eating a french fry, so it takes me 5 minutes to regain focus
45 minutes — Writing: unstructured writing. I write about anything on my mind. Sometimes I will list out 4-5 questions (essay prompts) and write to myself. Rejoice in the joy of stream-of-conscious writing
20 minutes — Rebaseline 2: go on another mini walk. Call my partner. Do whatever I want. Probably eating some good food
5 minutes — Libation 1: I get a big glass of red wine and/or a nice cup of coffee
60 minutes — Structured Reflection: this is the meat of the summit. Ideally you continue writing for this one, but maybe you need a break from that… Either way, during this time I go through three questions that my OKR-loving friends will surely recognize:
“What did you say you wanted to accomplish? How did it go?”
“If you could start from scratch again, what would you do differently?”
“Are you happy with how you spent your time?
“What are you most proud of since your last Press Pause summit?”
What brought you the most energy during the last (week, month, quarter, years, etc.)
10 minutes — Libation 2: ohhhh this red wine is niiiiceee
60-75 minutes: Go-Forward Aspirations: I usually begin here by rapidly reviewing / scanning everything I’ve written up to this point. From there I will ask myself a series of questions to get my brain moving.
“What do I want to be able to say I’ve done in 12 months?”
“Does what you just wrote about accomplishment overlap with what gives you energy?”
If it doesn’t, consider how you could create more overlap (more to come on this topic in a future issue…)
If it does, reflect on how awesome that is!
“How can I spend 20-30% more time doing work / activities that will give me the most energy?”
“What did I accomplish in the last 12 months, and how can I build on the momentum I gained?”
“What am I absolutely NOT going to do in the next 12 months?”
“Am I living my values? Why? Why not?”
Alternative wording: “How do I want to grow as a person in the next 12 months”
10 minutes: Taking Action: at this point, I try to summarize everything I’ve written into 5-6 bullet points. I’m inconsistent about this part. But what I am consistent about is deciding what I will do “this week and this month” to move closer to achieving my goals. The first step is the hardest step, and by committing myself to action “this week” or “today” it increases the likelihood that I’ll have some “wins” to celebrate at my next Press Pause Summit.