Activity that changed my life
By: Damir Pervan
Tags: Productivity, Planning, Reflections, Activity

Reflection

To make progress in life and basically any endeavor, man needs to reflect and learn the lessons from his past. We need to ask ourselves more often questions like What worked well and why? What didn’t work and why? What did I accomplish from period to period? What can I learn from my past?

The ability to reflect on my past gave me an incredible edge in my life and business. So, each Sunday, I reflect on my previous week that I designed and followed. I go over my milestones (more about the planning process later) and specific daily tasks in detail. I usually cross over the task and milestone when I accomplish it so I look for the milestones and tasks that I did not accomplish. I ask myself why. Was it too hard, too ambitious for that week? I ask myself various questions. Sometimes what you think is the right thing to do on Sunday, maybe it’s not the right thing to do on Wednesday. So you need to take into consideration the circumstances of that specific day.

After I went over the milestones and each task relevant to each milestone, then I write the lessons what have I learned that week, usually a couple of bullet points. Then I finish my reflection process asking myself how can I improve my effectiveness next week and I write down a couple of bullet points, this time as well.

This reflection process usually lasts for 30 min. Then I proceed to the planning process.

Planning

This is my favorite part. Now, based on the tasks and milestones that I did not complete the previous week, if they are still relevant, I will add them for next week. When I added the milestones and tasks that I didn’t complete the previous week I will write down the new milestones and tasks that I need to complete next week. Here how it looks. This is just a simple example.

Milestone: Publish 6 stories on Medium.

Tasks: Allocate 1 hour each day to write and publish one Medium story/day. Share my story on Linkedin and Facebook. Message my friends to check out my story. Email the story to my email subscribers…

You get the point.

The planning process usually takes me 30 min but sometimes even 45 minutes if I think really hard about what is most important for me to accomplish next week. I don’t pay attention to my time when I am in the planning zone because this time is very well spent. When Monday comes, I know my milestones and what I need to do.

The majority of people wander through life without any definite plans or goals. Many don’t know what they suppose to be doing that day. Planning is very important for success even though plans don’t always pan out as we want.

I believe the greatest benefit of planning is clarity. You need to be clear about where you are going in life and what you want to accomplish.

The bigger picture

Reflection and planning are part of your big picture. Your big goals. I hope you have a set of goals you want to accomplish in your life and definite plans to the attainment of those goals.

You see, all these milestones and tasks are leading to my BIG goal to be achieved in 1–5 years. BIG goals are macro-level and weekly milestones and tasks are micro-level. They all create a complete plan for success.