Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good
Happy new year! If you’ve set any goals or targets for 2017, turn those goals and targets into plans and schedules.
Hope is a terrible strategy. You need more than hope. You need a plan.” —Mike Speegle
I’m in your corner. Thanks for being in mine!
Among the Akan people, the sankofa bird represents the work of reflecting on the past, drawing forward what’s good, and making good with the past in the present.
A good review enables you to do that with your own history.
Reflect on your last decade: 2006-2016. When you can identify the consistent patterns in your recent past, that gives you a great basis for interpreting your current life and recurring experiences.
Earlier this year I designed a tool for auditing 10 life zones, evaluating one’s health in those zones, and taking concrete action to progress. (Right-click on the two images in the slideshow below and save them to your device so you can come back to them later.)
Trace your last few steps so you can plan your next few steps, and review the full landscape of your life so that you don’t miss patterns that are connected.
If this process helps you as you review your recent past this week, send me a note and tell me.
I reserve time during the last week of each year to take stock and look ahead.
This card from the Execudeck challenges me not to wait for tomorrow, some future and imaginary time when everything will be perfect. Instead of projecting myself out into that future, I ask, how can I make best use of today?
It’s important to seize the possibilities we have right now before conditions change and some of the best windows of opportunities close.”
That means focusing on what’s doable today, and doing the next doable thing mindfully every day.
If you’d like some gentle prompts for your own year-end review and year-ahead planning, the YearCompass journal is a tool I found last winter. The designers, a team of six young Hungarians, now publish their review booklet in 19 languages and have shared it free online each December since 2013. Download it from their homepage!
