Welcome To Your Year of Intentional Retrospectives??

Hi Partner! How are you doing today? In last week's article I mentioned that the best way to hold ourselves accountable is to actually do the things we said we are going to do. It is not enough to just set goals and new year resolutions; we have to go a step further and put in the work of actually bringing those goals to life.

If you are anything like me, you are probably frustrated and overwhelmed by all the things you haven't done yet, even though you had intended to do them. It's a vicious cycle of setting goals, not following through, getting frustrated by your lack of follow - through and doing it all over again with the hope that this time around, you will surely get it right. Year in, Year out the cycle repeats itself. Scary, isn't it? The thought that this could be your life, an endless cycle of being trapped within the unrelenting jaws of untapped potential.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results - Albert Einstein

This year, you and I need to break this cycle by starting a new pattern and doing things in a completely different way. Today I want share with you a concept, that can completely change the trajectory of your life. In agile project management, teams practice, "Retrospectives". A retrospective is a continuous improvement meeting held at the end of every sprint or iteration. The primary purpose of this meeting is to reflect on the past sprint and identify what went well, what went wrong, and how the team can improve in the future.

To give you more context, a sprint/iteration is a short period of time in which a team works to complete a set of tasks. They are typically 1 to 4 weeks long, although that can vary depending on the project and team. By consistently holding retrospectives after every sprint, agile teams are able to continuously improve, collaborate better, achieve transparency and adapt better to changing requirements. In short, retrospectives help agile teams to do what they set out to do, better and much better with every sprint.

There are various techniques that can be used to conduct retrospectives. I'll only share two with you:

1. Start, Stop, Continue: This technique prompts the team to evaluate what actions they need to start taking, what they need to stop doing and what they need to continue doing.
2. 4L's retrospective: This technique prompts the team to reflect on: The things they liked (areas of success), what they learnt (lessons learnt), the areas where the team lacked (opportunities for growth), and what they longed for (aspirations for future improvement).

There's a lot that can be learnt from agile teams and their use of retrospectives. Here's two ways you can emulate agile teams to boost your goal setting, and ensure that you do what you set out to do:

Step 1: Take 30 minutes to reflect on 2024. Use both of the retrospective techniques I have shared above. What did you like about your 2024 and the work you put towards achieving your goals? What did you learn in 2024, about yourself, about life in general? What was lacking in your life and in your approach towards achieving your goals? These are now your opportunities to grow in 2025. Lastly, what did you long for? These are your aspirations, which you can continuously improve towards. Now that you have reflected deeply about your past year, what specific actions do you need to start taking to make your goals for 2025 come to life? What habits do you need to stop doing, in order to achieve your goals? And lastly, what do you need to continue doing? These are the things that worked for you.

Step 1 helps to you to reflect. Taking time to reflect is not merely a suggestion, but a need. You need to pause and not only look back at your life but look within too. Stare straight into your patterns, identify the pitfalls and the opportunities for growth. Reflection gives you a chance to choose. Are you going to continue doing the same things and living your life the same way or are you going to change?

An unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates

Step 2: Make your year agile. What do I mean by this? Adopt the agile mindset: learn quickly, adapt quickly, embrace change and make continuous improvement one of your life pillars. Break down your year into manageable quarters. Treat these quarters as sprints and have intentional retrospectives at the end of every sprint. Most times, we feel overwhelmed by just looking at our goals and resolutions. They look like insurmountable mountains. To do away with that overwhelm, you need to break down your goals into manageable chunks. You can pick 2 or 3 goals out of your list, that you can achieve in the first quarter. Focus only on those few goals for 3 months. At the end of your sprint, hold a retrospective to assess, and use your learnings to do better in the next sprint. Instead of being paralyzed by the thought of achieving 10 goals in a year, focus only on a few goals per sprint. Long term goals can also be broken down into tasks per sprint.

Step 2 is about embracing continuous improvement, learning and being adaptable. It is about taking focused and consistent actions for shorter periods of time and using your learnings to do better over and over again.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection - Mark Twain

As your accountability partner, I would like to challenge you to revisit your goals. How are you going to use what you have learnt about agile teams and retrospectives, to super charge your approach to achieving your goals this year? I truly hope you take the time to practice what you have learnt.

Remember, the best way to hold ourselves accountable is by doing the things we said we are going to do.

Welcome! to your year of intentional retrospectives. Til next time, partner????

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