Twenty Twenty Five
It is the year of our lord two thousand twenty five. People have been sharing their retrospectives of the past year as well as plans for the coming year on all the social media. I have been fairly religiously avoiding most of those posts. I did still end up reading/viewing/hearing a few almost through osmosis. I am using this post to discuss the three I liked most and are all related to one another and funnily enough on three different forms of media.
Blog
Samir wrote a post connecting one of the principles of scrum (the software development ideology) and resolutions. I don’t know anything about agile or scrum but the point about planning and retrospective being 5-10% of the whole process was interesting. The rest is focusing on the now. I guess many of us have the tendency to quit our resolutions once whatever streak we have built up is broken. Instead if it is broken, it is broken, just start a new streak. Whatever the length, just do it today. And the next today and so on.
Mastodon
Glyph posted a Mastodon thread (which is a summary of a video by CGP Grey) about forming themes for the year, instead of resolutions. As an example, he suggests that instead of “Walk a mile daily”, if the theme is year of activity, then every time we reach a fork in a road and we have 25 free minutes, go the long way round instead of working the 25 minutes. The video goes in further detail, and suggests to pick a theme that resonates with our brain. As a next step (or to simplify the main step), CGP Grey suggests to maybe pick a theme for a season instead. A year is a long time, the themes (and us) may change after the season, or they may remain same.
YouTube
Third is a connected video by “productivity expert” Ali Abdaal. Like CGP Grey, he also points out that a year is too long and to instead focus on quarters since 90 days is something we can reasonably plan for. Whatever the overall goal for the year, split it into manageable chunks for a quarter and then focus on those goals for each quarter.
Some Thoughts
I have been guilty about spending 90+% of my time on planning and the retrospective (regret) (with the vast majority on the latter). I was reminded of the wonderful quote from Kung Fu Panda: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That is why it is called present” (my choice of quotes probably reveals my level). I saw the movie 15+ years back and despite thinking of the quote often, still end up focusing on yesterdays and tomorrows. It is definitely not an easy idea to internalize and implement. Today is a good day to stop thinking about the failures of the last 15 years and instead focus on today.
The past year has been a big one for us, we moved halfway across the world and are now trying to set up a new life (+work) in Munich. From a professional viewpoint, my goal of the year is to settle in to my new role. From a personal view, it is mainly going to be integrating well in Munich. So my theme of the year is going to be consolidation. I will start with a season/quarter of consolidation.
It cannot of course be a hard and fast rule. Our son is joining a German-only (for all practical purposes) kindergarten so being able to speak German as soon as possible would make this transition easier for all of us. Hence learning German is pretty much a necessity for us personally. But at every metaphorical fork in the road in the coming quarter (Jan-Mar), I will pick the option of consolidating what I have or know than picking the new option.
Writing clarifies thoughts. My brain is always so muddled and writing the above down helped. I should do this more.
’Til Later