💡 Intro
During the holidays I dropped almost all the habits I built last year. This resulted in a slight loss of identity.
Who am I without my routines? Maybe I should just drop them altogether and see what happens.
Every time I’m tempted to take a radical decision, I take a minute to interview myself.
🎙️ The interview
In my search for answers, since I’m both the interviewer and the interviewee, I first come up with some questions.
The idea of “getting back on track” kept popping up in my mind. I figured it was a good place to start.
Here are the questions I picked to gain more clarity over my next steps:
- What does it mean to get back on track?
- What are some priming activities I can do to jumpstart my growth?
- What can I leave behind?
- How exactly do I want to grow in the next period?
- How much time I’m willing to spend on my goals?
- What could be a very small step I can take right now?
The questions will obviously vary, depending on your life situation and goals.
I will take you further through my reasoning process and share some of my answers.
They can serve as a starting point in designing your “self interview” and help you define your own getting back on track plan.
1. What does it mean to get back on track?
It means to get back to those habits and behaviours which have passed the test of time and still benefit me: eating healthy, training several times per week, journaling every now and then, keeping track of my money, spending time with my loved ones.
2. What are some priming activities I can do to jumpstart my growth?
I could clean up and/or organise my physical and virtual space, settle on a notes taking system (I’m testing Notion).
3. What can I leave behind?
Netflix, overthinking, irrational beliefs that bring me unease, like believing I should figure it all out in one go.
4. How exactly do I want to grow in the next period?
I have several goals for the next year:
Get comfortable learning in the open
Share useful insights on Business Communication, Well-being and Personal Growth by writing and posting 3 articles each week
Improve my writing and English language skills
Get 1.000 subscribers to my weekly newsletter
Increase the revenue I bring to cv30 advertising campaigns by 30%
5. How much time I’m willing to spend on my goals?
One goal already has a clearly defined time frame. I know I will be spending around 30 hours per week at the cv30 office. I can use most of those hours to attend to my goal: Increase the revenue I bring to cv30 advertising campaigns by 30%.
All the other goals are new and more difficult to predict. Luckily, they all circle back to the same thing: becoming someone who shares useful insights and provides value for 1.000 people.
To get to a realistic number, I started by subtracting all the hours I usually put in my daily activities and work.
For instance, I know I want to train 5 times per week. This means that around 8 to 10 hours will be set aside for this task and cannot be used for other growing attempts, besides my strength and muscles.
Another example is related to one of the priming activities I have decided upon: cleaning and organising my virtual spaces. I know this is something that will help me become more productive. However, I don’t want to spend 2 weeks straight moving folders and deleting files. I also don’t want to lean on a priming activity as an excuse to postpone working on my actual goals. 1 hour each week seems like a more suitable deal.
I use the same reasoning to subtract all the other habits, priming activities and daily stuff I want to do.
The result? Around 15 hours I can use each week to focus on my writing, share useful information and hope the rest will follow.
6. What could be a very small step I can take right now?
Open Google Calendar → Add the activities I want to do in the next 2 weeks.
💭 Final thoughts
I have used different versions of this thinking process every time I felt stuck. In my experience, it did not bring results at the first attempt. Since I cannot control everything that happens, I prefer to approach this with a flexible mind.
Each time I fall off the wagon I go back to my answers and remember my priorities. It always brings clarity and helps me in understanding what I need to do next.
If I do nothing, I get nothing. If I focus on a small improvement each day, or at least each week, at the end of the year I am always better off.
A full year of small successes can do wonders for reaching your goals.
And if your priorities change, go back and find other questions.
🧑🎨 Inspiration:
Irina from investiipetocuri.ro gave me access to a Life Design Course by Cristina Otel. I spent several weeks answering tons of questions about myself. These came on top of all the other questions Irina made me think about while taking her Investments Course last year. She inspired me to find my own questions and reflect upon them whenever I need to “get back on track”.
Alex Golub from alexgolub.com insisted on making me watch a youtube interview with Keith J. Cunningham, The “Rich Dad” From Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Keith J. Cunningham Himself! In the video, he talks about thinking time as a way to gain clarity and suggests designing your own questions and making time to answer them thoroughly.