Your Best Year 2020!

As I was about to make another New Year Plan during December 2018, with another fancy 8-10 things-to-dos, I was sure it's just another exercise for momentarily pleasure with ephemeral excitement. Just about the same time, My virtual Guru Tim Ferriss sent his unusual Friday email talking about Past Year Review (PYR) exercise. The email said New Year Plans fail miserably - it rang a bell, it's based on wishful thinking rather on concrete evidence based on our life experience.  

He elaborated, 'PYR requires going through your past year week-by-week, noting down all positive and negative events - keeping a daily diary will help here, pre-scheduling positive events in new year calendar and avoid doing negative things.' After a couple of hours I was ready with 2 lists: First list of positive outcomes in 2018: Spent wonderful time with my daughter, learnt swimming, read half a dozen bestsellers business books, joined gym, wrote couple of blogs, etc; Second - list of negatives: Kept getting late for office, not fully satisfied with professional progress, left gym after couple of months, half a dozen uncompleted books, etc. 

I decided to make my new year plan 2019 with these learning, to schedule more of positive activities that excited me and to avoid negative activities. My new year 2019 list included: 1. Getting Up at 5 am - Also inspired by this quote, 'If you miss an hour in morning, you will keep searching for it throughout the day.', 2. Excellence in Office work, 3. Reading and finishing many bestseller business books, 4. Focus on health and lifestyle, 5. Spend quality family time, 6. Continue to write blogs & publish something, 7. Learn a life skill - Driving, etc.

I started believing in Affirmations, which says if you really want something, it comes to you - if you persevere long enough, credit goes to Scot Adams, creator of Dilbert comics. He wanted a good score in his entrance exam, 748 to be precise, and he wrote 10 times daily in a paper that he wanted 748 score, despite practice paper marks never crossing 550 marks, he scored unbelievable 748 marks. Being a dork, he wanted most gorgeous girl to be his girlfriend, he wrote about it, he had her as his girlfriend followed by success of his wishes to be world's highest selling author, despite not being written a single article. Throughout my journey in 2019, many incidences guided me towards getting best solutions of my dilemma of getting ahead, I believe my affirmations helped me get ahead.

Something from the list was easy - like learning to drive. I inquired and scheduled my classes for 3 weeks and by end of Jan'19, I learnt driving. However for more complex pointers, making a list and implementing it are 2 different spectrum, getting up at 5 am was too ambitious a target, and I needed help. As luck would have it, Robin Sharma, a self-help writer, announced launch of his much awaited book '5 am Club'. I read two more books 'The Morning Miracle' By Hal Elrod and '5 am Revolution' by Dan Luca along with it. The combined learning from 3 books included a compulsory schedule of 3 things in the morning, first exercise, second writing your goals and third reading or learning something new and exciting.

For exercise I was pondering over Gym, however I had already failed to continue it; I chanced upon morning Yoga classes in my building and my problem was solved, for a year now Yoga is my constant companion and my motivation to getup early. The Morning Miracle book suggested daily practice S.A.V. E. R. S. (Silence Affirmation Vision Exercise Reading and Scribing.) while '5 am Revolution' book suggested to daily write desired 10-12 goals without looking back at old pages - for which he suggested will evolve to only most important ones and trivial will be melted away - these both books made up for writing part which included daily writing of Affirmation and 10-12 goals.

Now about reading business books, there are 1000s of best sellers available in the market and to choose a few is nothing sort of miracle. Serendipity strikes again, Marketing Hall of fame Seth Godin decided to suggest in his latest book 'This is Marketing', best 30 marketing books out 1000s he has read, that will be enough for a lifetime. It became my goal for year 2019.

As I started following top of my list and bottom half also ran along, waking up early and doing Yoga was also taking care of health and reading something in the morning, which never crossed 5-6 books a year, was also fulfilling my promise of 30 books a year. I was reaching office on time, despite being a close 2 two hour one way journey, which was acting as me time to again read and listen to books, and office performance was one the best I had ever given, proven by team's success and 2 back to back prestigious awards. 

As I was reading more, I was also observing more and writing more blogs; however publishing something was far from sight. Then NaNoWriMo came along, its National November Writing Month - which promotes writing 1667 words daily for a month to write a 50,000 words novel. November turned out to be most successful month ever for my life, for a period of 30 days I wrote close to 2000 words daily - along with other activities in my list, and I completed my novel. I din't publish it however, but it inspired me to write a short story and by second week of December 2019, I was published. 

Not all list came true - those are in 'etc.' in my list, like weight reduction, running a marathon, couldn't complete those 30 books - almost in boundary line etc. but still 2019 turned out to be most successful year for me. Just a change of perspective - from a wishful New Year Plan to a concrete Past Year Review Plan. What are you waiting for?