30 Lessons From 2020

I’ve been reflecting on some of the positive lessons of 2020 and wanted to share some of them with you.

Along with some of the things that have worked really well for me, things that were either new or solid reminders of why they’re important.

In no particular order…

1) Predominantly Plant-based eating

I had been slowing moving in this direction for about a year, but in March I started planning all my meals Monday to Friday as plant-based. I’ve learned so much about cooking, planning, different ingredients and flavours, and I’ve noticed a huge shift in my energy.

I suspect 2021 will be the year where I go full plant-based.

2) Importance of gut health

I feel like I’m way behind the curve on this one, but catching up fast. Gut health is a huge area of research, and issues with the microbiome have been linked with poor mental health, performance, mood and a wide range of diseases.

It also explains why some people simply can’t seem to lose weight, and why calorie counting and measuring macros is a waste of time for most people.

You can start to improve this by eating a diverse range of plant-based ingredients - up to 30 different varieties each week.

3) Slow down and eat mindfully

This came up a couple of times in my interviews with gut health experts. We can make huge improvements to our gut function simply by slowing down and chewing our food properly, concentrating on what we’re eating rather than being distracted with work or scrolling through our phones.

4) Bodyweight training

This has always been my bread and butter, but I’ve developed a new level of appreciation and gratitude for the ability to train anywhere with zero equipment. Never underestimate the potential of bodyweight workouts!

5) Combination Exercises

I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from a few Instagram peeps I’ve been following. And one thing in particular has been the idea of more complex, combination movements such as ‘Kick Through Burpees’ and ‘Beast Bridges’

6) 8 Minute Abs

Ever since the first lockdown I’ve been putting in regular mini ‘8 minute ab boosters’ as breaks from work, sometimes two or three a day. I’ve not been quite so diligent these last couple of weeks, but I’ll be building them back into my day for as long as I’m still WFH. Here's one I filmed a while back for my boost members

7) QiGong

I hadn’t seen this one coming, but after a friend invited me to take part in a live Zoom QiGong session I knew I needed more of it in my life. It was the perfect antidote to my usual highly charged energy and need to be doing. It’s what I might have described as ‘old people’s exercise’ a few years ago, but the reality is that it’s an incredibly calming form of exercise that blends movement with mindfulness.

8) Need for calm and just ‘being’

The QiGong seemed to shine a spotlight on my need for a calmness to balance out my more dynamic energy. I often found myself doing, doing, doing, struggling with the silence that came in between or at the end. I’ve been learning to be more at peace with the ‘being’ part of human being.

9) Need for stimulation and variety

I think this is something most of us have been lacking this year, as our routines have become more limited and opportunities for stimulation reduced. I hadn’t realised how much it affected my creativity and sense of motivation, so I started to seek the new in the old, and say yes to any tiny opportunity for adventure or something different.

10) Listening to (and trusting) myself more

I’ve had coaches and mentors for years, and I have no intention of turning my back on the advice, encouragement and questioning that a trusted coach can offer. But I’ve also been learning to listen to my own inner voice and trusting myself more. It can feel comforting to have somebody else guide you on your journey. But the more we rely on external signals the less we tune into our own.

A bit like relying on Google Maps to navigate, and over time gradually losing our own sense of direction.

10) Paying attention, not just spending time

Living in such close proximity to the family for so long, it’s become very easy to spend time together, without actually paying each other any real attention. It really does take effort, energy and intention to give another person 100% focus and attention. I don’t always get this one right, but it’s become even more important as an area to work on in 2020.

11) Book Clubs

I've never been in a book club before but have really benefitted from it this year. I joined William Buist's excellent book club which focused my attention on a particular book each month. I found there to be huge benefits from discussing my takeaways with others, and listening to theirs as well, picking up things I may have missed and seeing how the same information lands differently with different people.

12) Simplify

Unsubscribing from email lists, stripping back complicated processes, dealing with things as they come in, assessing new ‘opportunities’ rather than just saying ‘yes’ to everything that crosses my table. These are all ways I’ve tried to simplify things this year and I’m actively looking for more ways to strip out the complexity in 2021!

13) Sense

A great book by Russell Jones, there are myriad ways we can enhance our motivation, happiness and confidence, and reduce anxiety and stress. Smells, colours, music, even the shape and weight of your crockery and cups can have an effect. I don’t think that any one thing would make a dramatic difference, but it’s been interesting experimenting with different things.

14) Planning

This has been a game changer for me this year. Planning my day the night before, and most importantly scheduling things that have to get done into specific time slots. This has taken my productivity, engagement and motivation from around 40% to 80%. Still room for improvement, but noticing big shifts in amount and effectiveness of the work I’m getting done. Here’s a copy of the template I use and here’s a short video explaining how I use it.

15) End of day routine

If you’re working from home this could be a good one. When you don’t have an actual commute, it’s sometimes hard to delineate between work and home. So I started an end of day routine over the summer that has helped me draw a line under the work day, and shift gears to being a dad and husband. The three things I do are:

1) Pack down all my work stuff

2) Write my plan for the next day

3) Go for a 15 minute ‘fake commute’ around the block with my dog and a child (one of my own, whichever is closest, this technique works just as well without dog or child)

16) Virtual coffees

Chance encounters with friends in town or meet ups for coffee were severely restricted in the first lockdown, and again I hadn’t realised how much these social interactions were important to me. So when I needed to bolster my own resilience and wellbeing I reached out to a number of friends and arrange times for ‘virtual coffees’. Half hour catch ups over Zoom or on the phone aren’t quite the same as in-person, but it did the trick and I actually felt a lot closer to some of my friends as a result of it.

17) Showing up

Part of my planning process is to write down how I want to show up in the day. It’s always the same 3 things: Focused & Indistractable, Energised and Engaged, Calm and Centred. Amazing the difference it can make to how you show up, when you’ve really thought about it and set your intentions in advance.

18) Gratitude

A long time practice this one, but another that has taken on more significance and importance during the shenanigans of 2020. Writing down 3 good things that have happened in the day just before I switch out my light has helped me keep a balanced perspective, and go to sleep with positivity in my mind.

19) Journaling

I added a very consistent 10-20 minute journaling habit to my morning routine which really helped unpack some of the thoughts and emotions that have been coming up. I use it as an opportunity to observe the thoughts that have been cycling through my mind, and any emotions that have come as a result of them. It’s helped me deepen my own self-understanding and development, and has been instrumental in helping me stay on top of my own mental health and resilience.

I also published my 2nd book, the Work In Progress Journal which you may like to take a look at if you’re thinking of building this practice into your own set of habits for the New Year

19) Surround yourself with people who will lift you, challenge you and inspire you

Never underestimate the power of having people in your life who will do these things. Not by forcefully applying their will to you, but simply by the way they live their lives. We’re the average of the people we spend most of our time with and whilst we may not have complete control over this we can still seek out groups to join online that are full of people with a positive and supportive attitude.

20) Mobility

I’ve increased my usual 2 minute morning mobiliser sequence to include some more moves that have been helping keep my back, hips and upper body mobile. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of age-related issues I may be experiencing lol! Here are a few examples on another on an Instagram post earlier from this year.

21) Buffers

Working from the same spot each day means it’s easy to lurch from one activity to the next. A Zoom call to a batch of emails to some writing to a few phone calls and on to the next meeting. I started to find that I wasn’t taking enough breaks, and felt like I was carrying some kind of ‘emotional residue’ from one task to the next. So I started to add in these mini ‘buffers’ in between, where I literally just stand up, check in with my posture, maybe do some breathing (see next point), and reset my intentions.

22) Breathing

Of course we all breathe, all of the time, but when we get into stress-mode (fight and flight) it can become shorter and shallower, mainly coming from the chest. When you notice stress is building up, take a moment to place a hand on your belly and the other on your chest, then breathe into your belly. You should feel this hand rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale. That’s your diaphragm working, and your body resetting into more of a state of calm centredness.

23) Screen Time

At one point when I checked my phone stats I was up to an average of 6.5 hours screen time a day. This was too much, and purposefully put a number of strategies in place to make me more mindful and bring the numbers down.

One of these was a screen curfew at 9:30pm, which ends at 7am the next day. I use the iPhone Settings > Screen Time > Downtime feature to help me do this. Once it’s set I don’t have to think about it, it just happens every day. As a result of this and a few other strategies, I’ve dropped and kept my screen time down to about 3-3.5 hours a day.

24) Sugar tracking

The WHO recommends no more than 25g ‘free’ sugars a day for women and 35g a day for men. That’s 5 and 7 teaspoons respectively. Good news is that you don’t have to quit sugar entirely, but getting into the habit of checking the packet and seeing what is in what you’re eating can be enough to nudge you off autopilot and make a more deliberate choice.

25) Curating a positive feed

From conspiracy theories and complaining ‘friends’, to stressful and emotional news stories on repeat, your social media feed can be a high stress environment. Curate a more positive feed using the magic ‘unfollow’ button, and you’ll gradually train your favourite social media channel what you do and don’t like. It may seem harmless enough, but unnecessarily exposing yourself to negativity can have a real impact on your mindset and mental health.

25) Daily self-accountability

On January 1 2018 I started a daily video check in to log the steps I'd taken and progress I had made towards a big goal of mine, 'to establish myself as a professional speaker'. These have been instrumental in keeping me on track with this goal, which has had more set backs and challenges than I've ever encountered in a goal. But the simple act of filming for a couple of minutes and then uploading to a YouTube channel has kept me 100% focused on it, and today will be episode 1089!

26) The Big Shop

This may be a very low level, no brainer, super obvious one for many of you, but for me the Big Shop has been a revelation this year! I used to do multiple shops each week, just ‘popping in’ on the way home from work. I knew it wasn’t the most efficient or cheapest way of doing it, but the truth is that it wasn’t quite painful enough to force me into finding a better way. Enter Lockdown 1.0, where a trip to the supermarket could involve a 30 minute queue, so I had to figure out the Big Shop pretty fast. This lead to better planning, healthier meals, a lower weekly food bill and a weird obsession with my Saturday morning Tescos ritual that I’m still absolutely loving 40 weeks later!

27) Podcasts

I’ve just started getting into these, and have even decided to start my own in early 2021! I tend to listen to them when I’m in the car, cooking food or getting ready in the mornings, and then try to note down anything that pops up that I want to remember or do something with. I’m currently enjoying the conversations on Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast, Feel Better, Live More.

28) 'Defacing' books

I’ve always had a huge stack of books that I wanted to read, but never seemed to make much progress through them. I finally figured out that the reason I wasn’t getting them read, was because I wasn’t sitting down to read them. Funny that, right? Making the time to read a priority in my schedule has meant I’ve been getting through 2 or 3 books a month, and accelerating my knowledge, development and understanding in a number of areas.

I’ve also started to ‘deface’ my books by underlining passages, then going back over them again when I’ve finished to reread the underlined bits. I make notes as I go, and then most importantly try to put at least something into practice immediately. Implementation, not just information :)

29) Writing goals every day

I write some of my goals every single day, right there on my planning sheet. I find that by doing this, it helps me connect the thing that I’m doing, to the reason why I’m doing them which in turn has helped me boost my motivation and engagement, and kept me honest about the importance of some of the tasks that make their way onto my list. When I can see they don’t move me closer to my goal I have to question why I’m doing them. Sometimes I still do them, but most of the time I realise that the time could be better spent on a more high value (if not quite so fun!) task.

30) Books I’ve read this year

Some of the books I’ve read, re-read or listened to this year that have helped me personally include:

1. The Obstacle Is The Way (Ryan Holiday)
2. The Daily Stoic (Ryan Holiday)
3. The Enneagram (Helen Palmer)
4. Understanding The Enneagram (Russ Hudson & Don Riso)
5. Principles (RayDalio)
6. Indistractable (Nir Eyal)
7. 18 Minutes (Peter Bregman)
8. High Performance Habits (Brendon Burchard)
9. Advice Not Given (Mark Epstein)
10. A New Earth (Ekhart Tolle)
11. The Untethered Soul (Michael Singer)
12. Sense (Russell Jones)
13. Never Split The Difference (Chris Voss)
14. The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron)
15. Tools Of Titans (Tim Ferriss)
16. Living Forward (Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy)
17. Silence (Thich Nhat Hanh)
18. The Art Of Exceptional Living (Jim Rohn)
19. Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
20. The Gut Health Diet Plan (Christine Bailey)
21. Words That Change Minds (Shelle Rose Charvet)
22. Deep Thought Strategy (Steve Lowell)
23. Priceless (William Poundstone)
24. Backbone (David Wagner)
25. Spoon-Fed (Tim Spector) (just started reading this, enjoying it so far!!)

The Lessons

I produced this list as part of my reflections back over what's been a difficult year for all of us. It's easy to miss the positive lessons when the view is clouded by so much challenge and adversity.

I encourage you to take a few minutes yourself to look back over your year and identify some of the nuggets of gold, and think what you will carry forwards, what you will start, and what you will stop in 2021.

Here's to a peaceful end to the year, and a productive start to the next one.