The year I had in 2017 is a fit­ting tes­ta­ment that you can tru­ly design the life that you want, in every domain.  Though I have been study­ing the mind for what it seems like years, it was only a year ago that I final­ly got “it”.  I was work­ing tire­less­ly towards my goals and things were just not pan­ning out, despite the work and effort I was putting.

I retraced my steps, learned where I was going wrong, had sev­er­al A‑ha moments, changed what was­n’t work­ing, and only then did things real­ly start to take off.  I now take rein­ven­tion as a per­son­al challenge–a pro­duc­tive game I’ve become obsessed with.

I read some­thing quite pro­found the oth­er day from one of my favorite authors, Steve Chan­dler.  He said, “be use­ful rather than enter­tain­ing.”  I thought, wow.  This is real­ly great advise.  I am an opti­mist; I enjoy help­ing peo­ple believe how beau­ti­ful they are.  But get­ting peo­ple tem­porar­i­ly excit­ed with­out giv­ing them some­thing they can use is not very help­ful.

So I’ve made some piv­ots to help you achieve your best year.  There were some things I was doing wrong.  First, I was not focus­ing.  Please believe me when I say that you can have what­ev­er you want, just not at all once.  My mind was con­stant­ly dis­tract­ed with dif­fer­ent ideas run­ning at the same time.  My inten­tions were great and my goals were risky, but real­is­tic. They just could­n’t all hap­pen at the same time.

One of my favorite areas of study has to do with essen­tial­ism and min­i­mal­ism.  Some of my favorite books of all time include The 12 Week Year, Essen­tial­ism and The Com­pound Effect.  These three books tru­ly changed my life.  I am now get­ting a lot more done in a frac­tion of the time, sleep­ing bet­ter at night and I am find­ing that I have all the time in the world to tru­ly unplug on evenings and week­ends.

In The 12 Week Year, you’re asked to select 1–2 major goals and focus only on that one goal for 12 weeks.  I mod­i­fied it to 8 weeks because I knew that 3 months was just too long for me.  You have to do what works for you.  Some peo­ple can read for an hour straight, good for them.  If I am read­ing a saucy nov­el, per­haps I can, too.  But my read­ing is inten­tion­al and I have to stop to real­ly take in the con­cepts, jot down notes and think.  There’s a lot of stop and go.  I can only read with­out los­ing focus for no more than 20 min­utes at a time.  But if I read for 20 min­utes three times per day, then I accom­plished my goal of read­ing an hour per day.  Do what works for you.

I now have 6 “8‑Week Years” in one 12 month cal­en­dar year.  I can accom­plish at the very least, six major goals per year.  It’s amaz­ing how much you can get done when you slow down, pri­or­i­tize and focus on one thing at a time.

The great does­n’t hap­pen through impulse alone, and is a suc­ces­sion of lit­tle things that are brought togeth­er. Vin­cent Van Gogh

Let me share how this works.  In Your Best Year, Michael Hyatt rec­om­mends that we come up with a com­bi­na­tion of 7–10 habit and achieve­ment goals (I’ll dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence between the two in a lat­er post) from dif­fer­ent life domains (health, spir­i­tu­al, career, voca­tion­al, avo­ca­tion­al, finance, etc.) for one 12-month cal­en­dar year.  Once you have a list of goals you want to achieve, pri­or­i­tize them in order of impor­tance (they must be impor­tant to you, not your spouse or boss) and place each in your 12-Week Year.

Only after com­plet­ing the cur­rent “year” was I able to move on to the next.  I was com­plete­ly focus­ing on one goal at a time, and it was­n’t as dif­fi­cult as I’d thought it would be because I knew that I could move on to the next goal very soon.  I did­n’t have to car­ry 3 books around (yes, I was read­ing 3 dif­fer­ent books at a time and mak­ing very lit­tle progress on each one!).  It was lib­er­at­ing.  It was a win-win for my brain and fid­gety per­son­al­i­ty.  I was able to accom­plish sev­er­al major goals in one year by focus­ing on one goal at a time.

I spent most of 2017 tru­ly uncom­fort­able; it was also my best year.  Isn’t it inter­est­ing that my tough­est year was also my best?  Each time I accom­plished a goal, it was the effort I was most grate­ful for because I knew that I was stretch­ing myself.  As my men­tor (through his books) Michael Hyatt says, “A goal is not just about what you accom­plish.  It’s about what you become.”

Friends, I com­mend you for set­ting goals, and I invite you to vis­it often for tips on how to attain them and achieve your best year!

Wish­ing you all a healthy and pro­duc­tive 2018.

Irís