As Ferris Bueller said:“ Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. So at this half way point of the year, it might really serve you to take a look at all that you have done and achieved so far, and then look at what you want the second half to look like. Here are some simple steps to help you with that process.
One of the organising principles for feedback is to be specific so that you can take action to mitigate or completely change the outcome. If your feedback to yourself is unclear and fuzzy, then it is difficult to know what to do to improve, if indeed you need to.
First, let’s start with what has been great.
- What have been some of your Magic Moments? These are things that just made you feel great or made you smile. Maybe you remember laughing really hard at a dinner, had the chance to say a heartfelt goodbye to a valued colleague, really helped someone out, met up with someone you haven’t seen since before Covid, got a new job, etc. This is any overwhelmingly positive moment that has stuck in your mind.
- What were some of your most significant Work Achievements? This might be closing a great deal, getting a raise or a promotion, passing some exams and getting a qualifications, winning new business or finding a new client. Anything that really means something to you that you achieved and feel proud of - capture these memories and moments.
- What are some of the things that you would want to Replicate? If you have found a great way to do something once, you now have a powerful pathway that you can perhaps replicate to get the same or similar results. So what might be and what were the steps that you can follow and repeat?
Now, let’s look at what didn’t go so well?
- What were the things that you can control or influence that you would ideally not like to repeat? What were the causes for that going wrong that you have agency over? What can you put in place so that it does not happen again? There is real value in this reflective thinking and lessons learnt.
- What didn’t get done? Do you still want it to happen? Was it just because it is a low priority or was there procrastination because it seemed too big or uncomfortable to do in the moment? Are there ways to collaborate with others so that you save time and effort and still get the result?
- Are there lessons that you can learn from the successes and misses of people around you? Learning from others is a great way to accelerate the quality of your game.
Finally, we can have a look at what you want the second half of the year to look like.
- Starting with the big chunks - what are the most significant results that you want to achieve this year? Once you have decided on them, you can begin to think about WHY each is such a priority. What will achieving each of these results give you? How will it serve your career and your team / business? Then, perhaps, consider what resources will be needed, including time allocated to get them done. It might also be worth considering what the opportunity cost of achieving the results will be - meaning what are the other things that you cannot do because you will not have the time, energy and resouces to do them as well. Then just check in and confirm that your priorities are as you want them to be.
- Schedule some fun. Think about what you can do or create for yourself and others in the second half of the year - Magic Moments on purpose, if you like.
- Also, you might want to have a short list of “Not Now” results ready so that you can bring them forward, should you move through your established priorty list easier and faster that you anticipated.
I sincerely hope that gifting yourself a little time out, maybe on a weekend, to work through these steps will really help you to feel great, remembering all the successes so far and to get excited about all the good things yet to come in 2022.
