Modern Wisdom: How to Properly Do an End of Year Review

 

Many people use the end of the year as a breakpoint to check in with how life is going and plan what they want to achieve in the following twelve months.

In this podcast, Chris Sparks gives Chris Williamson the exact Annual Review process he takes his high-performance clients through to achieve maximum clarity and prepare for a year of success.

Video and audio recordings below (1h8m). Show notes and full transcript following.

Resources mentioned:

Podcast Transcript

[Note: transcript edited slightly for clarity.]

Chris Williamson: Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome back. I hope you had a fantastic Christmas, and I've got a very timely episode today. Planned on this one quite a while, to just slot it in in the weird kind of nothing No Man's Land that exists between Christmas and New Year. We're often thinking about, "How did this year go? What do I want to achieve in the coming year?" And the end of year review is a process that very few of us have properly, or formally, written down, but almost everybody kind of gets this sense that they should be doing it. So today I got an old buddy of the show, Chris Sparks, former top twenty online poker player on the planet, and a wonderful productivity and executive coach to CEOs, founders, and many other high performers, to come and give us the exact process that he gives his clients to ensure that they ensure the best clarity around what they want in the coming year, so that they can close all the doors to the open loops from the last year.

So, today you will get to see absolutely everything that he uses and also, you know, you've got the next whatever. You've got the next week. You can get this done before the New Year. Follow it through. Chris gives us a worksheet, he's created a worksheet for us for free. And the URL is further on in the episode, so stay tuned for that, and just get it done. You know, it's gonna take you a couple of days, but it will give you so much clarity and purpose and perspective as we enter this New Year. And, you know, 2020 has been a year of challenges and difficulties for almost everyone. This could be a fantastic way to utilize those to power you forward, rather than finishing it with a little bit of a loss. I really enjoy doing these timely episodes that are tied in with a particular period that we are all at in the year, and hopefully, this will provide tons and tons of value to you. 

If that's the case, then let me know how we get on @chriswillx wherever you follow me, and if you enjoy it and think it would help other people then please give it a share. The only way the show grows is by people like you sharing it with people like you. And it really could help. So, yeah. Crack on. Press the share button. Just a little share, share, share away.

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But for now, it's time to learn how to do an end of year review with Chris Sparks.

Chris Sparks: Good to be back.

Chris Williamson: So good to have you back on, man. How's 2020 been on your end?

Chris Sparks: You know, it's . . . there's been a lot of bright spots this year. I think everyone's aware of the craziness and all that's gone on, but I've been pretty pleasantly surprised at how well I've thrived. I think the big news was I got engaged. Realized that my partner who—some would say—I was stuck with, I was like, "Wow, this is amazing, we get to spend all this time together and are having a blast," and hey, if it's so good when things appear so bad, let's take this to the next level. So that was a super silver lining. You know, this really made me refocus on priorities, which I think we'll get into, particularly being closer to family, moving closer so we can spend a lot of time with our respective families. My just-born niece has been incredibly meaningful. And also just . . . I've been fortunate that you know, the way that I earn a living, the way that I serve the world, both of those were already online-based, so I've had lots of really meaningful and interesting opportunities to support entrepreneurs and executives through all of this turmoil. So I mean, all external craziness aside, I think it's been a very cool year.

Chris Williamson: You are one anti-fragile son, aren't you?

Chris Sparks: That is the goal. I mean, the world is going to get weirder. It is just going to get weird. It is not going back to normal, what happened this year was not just like a glitch in the Matrix. Weird stuff is going to continue to occur, and my goal personally (and how I try to help clients) is, “how can you put yourself in a position to thrive no matter what the world throws at you?” And I think it's really encapsulated by that concept of anti-fragility. While many systems, people, organizations are threatened with, "Hey, if things change a little bit, if the tide rolls out and, ‘Oh no, I have my pants down,’” any change becomes bad and it becomes a threat. But you can position yourself with your habits, with your relationships, with your learning, to be someone who not only is . . . does okay when things get weird, you can actually thrive in those environments because you are well-positioned. You're already surfing before the wave comes. So yeah, I think this was a test, and that's what I come back to, is it's all practice. It's all an opportunity to put the things that we've learned and know into practice.

Chris Williamson: So yeah. Obviously, your background, professional online poker player, top in the world, and executive coach to founders and CEOs and all of this stuff. I'm gonna guess that the end of the year is probably a pretty intense time when it comes to reflecting and planning.

Chris Sparks: Yeah. I try to practice what I preach. I think that's a really big factor, or what I would call a forcing function, to be able to walk the talk, so to say. So I try to set aside a few days at the end of the year to close the container on what happened in the previous year, and do what I can to set myself up for success, particularly as around the holidays there's less inbound coming in. Things slow down, and I like to go against traffic. I find that when everyone else is taking time off, that's the best time to do the deep work. And something that I've done the past couple of years is I go and take the takeaways from my annual review and planning, and share them online. Which I'll get into later, the returns that I've seen from that. And so that's, essentially, I'm blocking off about a week towards the end of the year solely for that process of capture and then turning that into a post.

Chris Williamson: What's your stance on, "New Year, new me"?

Chris Sparks: I think in terms of continuous small improvements. So you know, nothing changes when January 1st comes along versus December 31st, but these cultural milestones, arbitrary as they are, the . . . You know, your birthday, the end of the year, these can serve as very valuable checkpoints. So I try to treat it as a checkpoint. You know, on paper, nothing has changed from one day to the next, but it can be very useful to have these recurring check-ins to say, "What's going on? What's next?" And so I don't think that I want to try to change everything, but it's a good opportunity to check, “Hey, a lot of things change in a year, especially this year. What's changed based on that? What makes sense to move towards next?"

Chris Williamson: Got you. So why do we need to do an end-of-year review? What are the advantages?

Chris Sparks: So many. So I would say the biggest pitch that I would give to someone who's considering doing this is life is better— we perform better, we feel happier, more fulfilled, whether that's in our work or in the people that we love—when we spend more time in the present. And the issue is today, we spend most of our time rehashing the past —things that we regret, things that we wish we could have done—beating ourselves up for past failures, or in the future—things that are upcoming, stressing out about upcoming deadlines or rehearsing conversations that we're about to have.

And my overall stance is, if we can increase the proportion of time that we spend in the present by just a tiny bit, we will get more done, we will be happier, more fulfilled, our subjective experience of reality will be enhanced. If I set aside time to reflect and plan to do that thinking about the past and the future during a designated time, that means more of my time I will be able to be present. I will be in that present moment. So that's like the overarching idea of why reflection and planning is important.

Annual reviews in particular, I think about every year as a chapter in my story. And so in my 80-to-120-chapter story, this 2021 (for me, chapter 34) is a good opportunity to think as the writer of that story: what's happening next to the character? What would I like to happen? What tension is likely to emerge? What opportunities are likely to present themselves? And if I can position myself and generate some awareness about what's coming up, I can be ready, I can be prepared for that, I can seize those opportunities. And I see it as I can architect this next chapter of my story if I do some outlining of it ahead of time.

Maybe this is a good time to talk about the four parts of what I think a good annual review and planning process are.

Chris Williamson: Before we do that, where do most people go wrong when they try and do a review? They haven't seen you, they haven't done your worksheet, and they're just, "Now I'm gonna have a crack at this myself," what are the mistakes that people make?

Chris Sparks: I think first I would say that any is better than none. So that's the biggest mistake, is—

Chris Williamson: Not doing it.

Chris Sparks: . . . "I'm just gonna keep doing what I was doing." And that's insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So my approach is that any time and intentionality that you bring to this exercise is gonna have a 10x return on your time and attention. First, just take it seriously. I think the cultural notion of a New Year's resolution, or as you said the "new me," is a good encapsulation of how a lot of people go wrong with this: they expect January 1st to come along, and all of a sudden they're going to become superhuman. You know, going from some . . . Let's say, hypothetically, someone who hasn't been exercising recently, that first . . . You know, everyone knows those first two weeks at the gym are the worst two weeks to go to the gym, because all of a sudden, everyone thinks they're going to be exercising an hour a day. Somebody tries to go from zero to sixty with nothing to sustain them except for willpower, the temporary motivation of "this year is different," and we all know what happens to those people after the first couple weeks of the year. They can't sustain that sprint forever.

I think that's the second thing to consider: rather than, "everything is going to change and I'm going to put this huge unsustainable goal in front of myself," thinking about, "What is that next step that I can take to create some forward momentum? I don't need to change everything at once, but generally, where am I heading, in my health, in my relationships, in my career? Where is that next North Star I'd like to direct my attention to, and just what is that next step on the path?" I think that consistency and that continuous improvement, that's what I call a feedback loop. Right? It feeds on itself. Every improvement plants the seeds for the next improvement. And so I think that's the second thing to highlight where a lot of people go wrong: they set the bar so high for themselves it's unrealistic, it's unsustainable.

The final thing that I would mention here is this is the opportunity to change everything. When I see a lot of people's results with their goals, it's, "Oh, I made $50,000 this year. Next year I want to make $60,000." Or, "I had 50 clients this year, next year I want to have 60 clients." Or, "I can bench-press 300 pounds, now I want to bench-press 350 pounds." And everyone thinks, just, "I want to do exactly what I'm doing, just a little bit more." And this is your opportunity to just completely sell everything, start from scratch, start from zero, and say, "I can do anything I want. What do I want to do? I don't have to keep doing anything that I was doing before. I can completely change." Everyone is like, "Oh, is it this path all the way over here or is it this path all the way over here?" And no. There's always a middle path that someone isn't considering. This is your opportunity to say, "Don't try to do more. It's not what I'm doing now, but just more of it.” It's, “What do you want? What would you like to be doing?" And giving yourself permission to think outside the box, to think about things maybe that haven't been considered.

That's why I said, it's nice to have this space for possibility, because most of the year we want to be spending our time in the present, focused, sprinting forward. Now is your time to just question everything. And that is so refreshing.

Chris Williamson: Yeah. The opportunity to assess our fundamentals, as you say there, the explore-before-you-exploit kind of paradigm, is so rare. And you know, everyone this year, even though probably the amount of stuff that we've been able to do has gone down, the urgent has still beaten the important, for the most part. Tasks are in front of you, the email that needs sorting, that load of washing that's got to be taken out before it gets musty, you know, all that sort of stuff. People can spend their entire lives, and I'm realizing this now, I could literally spend the rest of my life—I'm 32 years old—until the day I die just dealing with urgent, and never doing important. And I would always feel busy. And it would give me the sensation of being busy and being productive, but at the end, the actual amount of movement, ground that I covered, would be very little. 

Also, I was away in Dubai recently for about three and a half weeks, and while I was out there I met millionaires, billionaires, founders, CEOs, endurance athletes, YouTubers, Podcasters, Steven Bartlett, this CEO that founded Social Chain, from Diary of a CEO . . . Like literally guys that have such huge broad-scope vision. And it just blew my worldview apart. Like, I thought that I had a good idea of the sort of progression that I was able to predict. "Oh, well I can do, you know, grow the show by this and I can start this business, and oh, I can do a membership site," and this that and the other, and then I went and spoke to Steve over dinner, and he said . . . I was talking about, "How's Podcasting going? Who've you got?" "Oh, I've got Eddie Hearn, the boxing promoter coming." I said, "Oh, cool. I've got Eddie Hearn coming on soon. That will be sweet." And I'm thinking, "We're on the same path, he's just a little bit further along with a bigger pair of shoes on than I am.” 

And then I started talking about how he's monetizing, and he was like, "Oh yeah, well, Huel approached me because the CEO loves my podcast, and originally I think they might have just wanted to sponsor it, but then we turned the deal around and now I'm on the board. I'm going to take them to IPO. I've been given equity in the business, and I'm gonna get them to IPO and then I'm gonna exit." And I was like, "Okay, yeah, no. I'm playing checkers and you're playing chess. Like this is a total fundamental different worldview that we have over what is achievable," and I think what you're talking about there, that step back, reconsider, what are the possibilities that I can do . . . Like full, nothing . . . Uncover what's underneath the rug, what's in that cupboard over there, absolutely everything. So yeah, it resonates a lot with what I've learned, especially recently. 

So, the framework. Take us through the framework.

Chris Sparks: Yeah. I like what you said there around, "this is an opportunity to expand your sense of the possible." If you're thinking about, "How do I increase my conversion rate for my email signups?" you're probably doing it wrong. You can think a little bit bigger than that. Give yourself some temporary permission.

So, I'm adapting my format a little bit this year. I will say the format that I've used the past few years is available online. I'm gonna post that in the show notes, so we'll put that link in there. This year the way that I'm going about it, it's going to have four parts. And so the four parts are reflection, vision, planning, implementation. And so I'm going to do just a quick walk-through of each of those parts.

And so, first. Reflection. This is looking backwards at the previous year, and the classic two questions. What went well? What didn't go so well? And obviously the follow-up to those. What can I take away from that? What did I learn? And so this is where I'm looking at each area of my life, so the three basic pillars that everyone has: career, health, relationships. You can break those down for yourself, depending on, you know, need, desire, motivation. So, for example for career, I'd be looking at Forcing Function, I'd be looking at poker, I'm doing some investing so I'd be looking at my investing. Maybe with health, if you play a sport, you want to break out a diet, or exercise, or sleep. Relationships, for me I'm looking at my relationship with my partner, relationship with my family, relationship with my friends. 

And so this is fractal. You can go down to any level. And so, with reflection, I'm trying to pull up anything that happened. Something that I learned, something that was unexpected, something that changed along the year that I didn't expect from the beginning. All of these things are helping me to identify what's going on, what conditions work for me, what efforts that I did this year led me towards my goals. Just anything that I can use as fuel for this next year, things that I can draw upon, whether that's celebrating wins: "Oh, that was awesome, I want to do more of that!" or, "Ooh, I thought I was going to do that but I didn't even start," or, "Oh, I tried that and it went horribly." Let's uncover everything that happened with that, and how can we avoid paying tuition for those same mistakes twice? Because if we really bring up those lessons—"Hey, that's incredibly inefficient"—that we're not going to do it that way again, or, "That worked, let's remember that next time when we're in that same spot."

I set about ninety minutes aside, forty-five for the things that went well, forty-five for the things that didn't go so well. The second part . . . Go ahead.

Chris Williamson: I just wondered there, how are you defining or how are you finding the things that you want to focus on? Is it like an objective metric? Like, "I had this much sex this year, I had this much revenue this year." You know, like people could drown themselves in just high accolades. Are there any ways that you try and pinpoint . . . Is it just anything that arises into consciousness? "The good shit sticks," sort of?

Chris Sparks: Yeah, I think it's very possible to drown in details and to turn this into an accounting exercise.

Chris Williamson: Retrospective diary.

Chris Sparks: Yeah. So, the first way is, within each area, I am setting a timer and my goal is to just keep my pencil moving until the timer goes off. Anything and everything. No editing myself, I'm not trying to create some sort of narrative, I'm not patting myself on the back. Anything that comes up. And so if I have numbers handy, that's awesome. I don't do any of this near a computer, so if it requires me looking something up, I'll just make a guess, or I'll say, "Hey, how that felt," or, "Hey, here are some wins that came from it." For me, it's super subjective. Early in the year, I have some objective metrics to ground it upon. After I've done the brain dump I might check some of my monthly reviews to see, "Hey, is there anything that I've forgotten about, because a year's a long time?" 

But yeah, essentially whatever comes to consciousness, trying to swim as deep in the water as I can.

Chris Williamson: What's the reason for doing it analog rather than digital?

Chris Sparks: 'Cause I'm a total Luddite and I think that computers are a gateway to distraction.

Chris Williamson: That is a very good argument, man.

Chris Sparks: Half joking, half serious. I think that our tools shape us in a number of ways, and for me, I like this process to be a little bit messy, and I'm really big on trying to unplug and get away from my current context. This is probably a good time to note, as far as logistical stuff, don't do this at your desk. Don't do this in the place that you spend a lot of time. Your context in a lot of ways shapes your thinking, and so I try to get as far from my desk as possible. If you're lucky enough to live in the Southern Hemisphere, hey. Like, go put a blanket down on the beach or in the woods. If you're like us, you're stuck and it's super cold and you have the ability, I like to rent an Airbnb for a couple days. You know, get a cabin in the woods, and ideally, there's no internet there, or I unplug the internet, and just try to get away from my normal way of thinking and doing things as possible. If it's not possible for you to leave your home, your apartment, pick a new space. Create a special space, like a new chair in a new area that you don't work. Make it inspiring, make it a place that's reflective of the intentionality you're bringing to the exercise.

But yeah, I think that's a really big part of getting the maximum out of this exercise, is to get away from your normal way of being.

Chris Williamson: That pattern interrupt's interesting. Really interesting. I'm a big fan. We can go down this rabbit hole forever, but my newsletter that's going out this week is all about the pattern interrupt that I had when I was in Dubai.

Okay. So we've got what went well and what badly from the last year, family, relationships, career, and what was the final one? Health.

Chris Sparks: Health.

Chris Williamson: Health. Cool. What next?

Chris Sparks: So we've generated all of this fuel, all of these things to learn, and so we're a little bit inspired and we're a little bit disgusted, and we're gonna take that and we're gonna convert it into this next step, which is "vision." And at a high level, "vision" is, "What do we want?" And the overall question is, "What does next year look like?" And so this is a visualization in the present. We're not saying, "Here's what I'm going to do." It's like, "Here's what next year looks like," and trying to paint a picture of what we want. Revisiting all of these areas. "What do I want my health to be like?" "What do I want my career to look like?" "What's a typical day of work?" "What's a typical day with my partner?" And creating a picture of that. And the end game of this is generating creative tension. And so with the reflection, we have this picture of current reality, and now we have this vision of, "Here's what reality could be."

And so like a rubber band, there's this tension in, "Well now I know where I am and now I know where I want to be, and it's very obvious the differences between these two pictures." One of two things needs to change. Right? Nature abhors a vacuum. Either I need to bring this vision closer into reality, you know, lower the bar for myself, maybe something that's a little more realistic based on what's going on now, and/or I take where I currently am and I push it into alignment with where I want things to be.

I find this is a really valuable second part of this that's often skipped and that in the past I would skip, is, "What do I want? What are things going to look like?" Because this is what allows me to determine what goals do I need to have in order to bring this vision into reality.

Chris Williamson: That's cool, man. The differential . . . I think Jordan Peterson's got his future authoring and past authoring and present authoring program, and he uses precisely the same thing, that you create the tension between the two. So we've got reflection, we've got vision . . . I've forgot the next one, what's the next one?

Chris Sparks: Nice. So, halfway home. Vision, I set aside sixty minutes. And again, this is lots of writing, no judgment, keep the pen moving, anything is possible type thinking. And so I generally recommend, "Hey, that's a lot of brainwork." We're talking only two and a half hours, so obviously someone has the time, but you're gonna feel pretty drained afterwards. And so this is where I recommend, if you can end for the day and just like F off for the rest of the day. Go run around and play with flowers, go ride your bike, you know, hang out with your family, read some books. Just like do something that is completely non-work, completely unrelated. Just recharge yourself. And it's like letting all of this sit. You want to sleep on it, because things are going to come up in the interim. Now that you've opened these loops you'll start to identify connections. And so this is a great place for a productive break where you do anything that's not productive.

Okay, day two. This is, "All right, now I know what happened, now I know what I want. What the hell am I going to do to make this happen?" Part three is planning. And so this is part of the template which I'm going to share with the Modern Wisdom crew. You're looking at these areas that you identified in the reflection, and you're picking one goal—just one; everyone wants to pick multiple—one goal that you're going to shoot for in the next year. That North Star. And so the framing here is, "If you could only achieve one thing in your health, if you could only achieve one thing in your relationship, if you could only achieve one thing in your career, what would that be?" And really, really defining that. So how will you know if you've achieved it? Why is it important to you? What would it look like if it was achieved? What does that unlock?

You know, let's say that you've achieved enlightenment. What's next? What does that get you? All right, thinking about what do you want if you could only pick one thing? I say, a lot of life is reconciling with these trade-offs, and so assume you can only get one thing and choose wisely. Don't assign yourself more than you can chew. Hey, worst-case scenario, you achieve your big goal by month six. You have permission to pick a second one. No big deal.

So this is like each area of my life. I break mine down a little bit, thinking about, "What's my one goal in this area?" And once I've really, really defined that, it's clear what it looks like, someone else who's an objective third-party observer can say, "Yes, Chris, you did that," or, "No, Chris, you're kidding yourself." I'm gonna start to break that goal down into milestones. And so hypothetically if I wanted to achieve this goal right on December 31st, 2021, I would break this down to, "Okay, end of Q1, end of Q2, end of Q3, here's where I need to be in order to know if I'm on track towards this goal or off-track towards this goal."

Let's say, you know, just off the top of my head, maybe my goal for next year is to be exercising for an hour every day. Well, I'm not going to start this on day one. It might be, "All right, end of Q1 I want to be exercising one day a week every week without fail." And at Q2, it's, "All right, I want to be exercising two times a week every week without fail." All right, not missing a single one. Q3, "All right, I'll be exercising four times a week, or every other day." Whatever it is, since I'm building up slowly. By breaking down these milestones along the year, it allows me to course-correct if I'm behind. "All right, something's gotta change here." If I'm ahead, maybe I can raise the bar for myself a little bit. And then the final step—

Chris Williamson: Just before that. Your goal there that you've just chosen—I'm aware is just a hypothetical—but you've chosen a process goal as the outcome goal. So what you want you want is to be able to get to a point where you are able to do a process, and that process is your goal. Is that something that you would tend to get people to focus on? Would you rather people focus on . . . Not saying . . . So for me, next year, with the podcast or sort of the channel overall, would it be more optimal for me to say, "I want to hit five hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube by December 31st, 2021," or would you say, "I want to be publishing regularly one bespoke YouTube video per week by the 31st of December, 2021." You know, in terms of guidance, I think typically before James Clear came along, everybody thought in terms of outcome goals, but as we know outcomes are lagging measures behind the lead measures, which are our habits and our behaviors on a daily basis. How do we fit all of that together? I know that actual tacit goals, the 100K Play Button that you get for YouTube subscribers or whatever is a nice motivator, and that kinda helps to get us moving, but also the daily challenges that make the differences the habits. How do we kind of marry those two?

Chris Sparks: Excellent question, and if you don't mind I'm going to use you as a guinea pig example. The short, short answer is "both." And so the five hundred thousand subscribers, this is part of the vision. So having that outcome in mind, right? "What do I want?" And I think that you work backward from there. But again, a lot of people let themselves off the hook on this, and so let's use that example. It's, "All right, next year at the end of the year, I want to have five hundred thousand subscribers." Why? Why is that important to you, what does that achieve for you? Okay, now you have five hundred thousand subscribers. I'm handing them to you on a silver platter. Will you take them? Will you take these subscribers from me? Now that you have these subscribers, what next? What do you do? What does that change for you, what's different?

So this is all a part of that vision as far as what you want. And so clarifying that, and you can say sometimes it's, "Oh, well, I want" . . . I'm gonna just project on you, these are not things that Chris has told me before . . . "Well, five hundred thousand subscribers allows me to get any guest that I want in the world to come on the show." Or, "Five hundred thousand subscribers allows me to maximize that impact. That's the magic number that I have identified, that, ‘Hey, if I have this number of people, I know lots of people are going to hear me. I create some virality.’" Whatever it is, well you're like, "Well, that's interesting." Let's say that that desired outcome is, "I want to be able to get any person on the planet to come on the Modern Wisdom show." It's like, "Well, is there anything else you could do that might be a little bit easier, a little bit more direct towards that goal?" Once you have that vision, you can think about, "Are there any other paths to the top of the mountain?" And that planning part is, "All right, now that we have this vision, this North Star in place, which path do I want to take?"

And this is very much the journey and the input part of, "Okay, well I've decided that five hundred thousand subscribers is the goal, and now . . .” Well, it's, "If I record this many episodes per month and I send these episodes to these twenty influencers after every episode . . .” Right? You break that down into actionable steps that it's obvious whether you did it or you didn't, and it brings it back into your own control. I think the whole notion of a smart goal is super overplayed but way underutilized. There's a lot of power in just making things specific, actionable, and measurable. I always start with, "What do I want?" But then I bring that into, "What do I have control over? What can I do? What's something that I can track progress towards?" So, yeah. Both/and.

Chris Williamson: I understand, yeah. You can't . . . I can't control whether or not we hit half a million subs. I can't control whether or not I can deadlift two hundred and eighty kilos this time next year, but I can control whether or not I stick to my program and stick to my diet and continue to turn up in the gym and progressively overload and regularly check-in and do my rehab and all the rest of it, and over time it's, "What are the things that I can do that give me the best chance of achieving the goal that I have set?"

Chris Sparks: One hundred percent. You take a goal that is way out into the future, and you turn it into something that you can feel satisfaction for making progress on a weekly or even a daily level. And that's critical for taking action, is to reduce that delay. Right? If it's just, "Hey, I want to look good in my wedding dress (or my suit) in nine months," that doesn't really get me all that motivated to not have an ice cream today. But if it becomes, "Okay, well, nine months down the line, I've worked backwards. Okay, at month one that means I need to be exercising and at least tracking my macros at somewhat, or maybe I have one less dessert per week." But something that in the present is connected to these future goals, but gives me that satisfaction and reinforcement that I'm making progress.

Chris Williamson: So the goal setting we're picking within the three areas that we've got, that's it? We're not breaking that down yet? Is that part of implementation?

Chris Sparks: So we're breaking those down into milestones.

Chris Williamson: Okay.

Chris Sparks: So you know, "here's" along the way. The implementation part, this is the final, I think this is another part that a lot of people skip. All right, it's, okay. "Yes, I decided that next year is the year that I'm gonna eat Paleo. And, all right, it's just gonna happen. It's gonna be like magic." Well, now is the most motivated that we're ever going to be to become paleo, and so this is we set time aside now to do something about it. It takes some form of action. And so I set an hour aside at the end. "Is each one of these goals I have something I can immediately put it into practice?” And the power of this is that I take something from "I'm going to do this" to "I'm doing it." 

Let's say my goal next year is to write a book. All right. Well, I want to start writing the book the day that I decide that that I'm going to write a book. Even if it is, okay, the title of my book is "2021, The Best Year Ever," subtitle, "This Is Going To Be A Great Year." Just doing anything that has that verb change to, "now it is underway." This is really powerful, because the temptation with the goals is like, pat ourselves on the back. "Great, we've done it, we're gonna go ahead." And I don't think something like buying a gym membership and saying, "Great, now I'm in shape!" is the best thing, but you've gotta take that first step, so you might as well do it now.

So this is a part that I think is skipped a lot with this planning exercise, is like, "Great. You know what you're going to do. Do one tiny thing to take action towards it."

Chris Williamson: So for each of the different areas that we've got, we're going to take action. The messiest one that I can see is the relationships one. It's pretty difficult to objectively metric and quantify. Let's say that by the end of 2021, I want to be in a long-term committed relationship. Mom, don't get excited. There's not wedding bells or anything. I want to be in a committed relationship by the end of 2021, let's say. What's the step? Like, download Tinder today. You know, like make sure that the Hinge profile's been updated. You understand? I think that the relationship one's probably . . . I want to have a better relationship with my parents, brother, sister, housemates, whatever it might be. Have you got any ways that you can kind of cut through the noise of that?

Chris Sparks: So let's use the first one. That's a common one I hear, is, "I want to be in a long-term committed relationship." And as everyone knows, there's a lot of this that's in your control and a lot of it that's out of your control. Unfortunately, we can't make someone fall in love with us, as much as pick-up artists would like to have you believe. That I think that becoming someone who your dream person wants to be in a relationship with is your best thing towards becoming someone who's in a long-term relationship. Right? It starts with working on yourself. And so this is a very good opportunity, so primarily in the "vision" section, of, "Who is this person? What qualities do they have? What do they value? How do we spend time together?" All these types of things, having a very clear picture of what you're looking for, and so when Cupid hits you with the arrow you can recognize this person, perhaps. You know what you're looking for. 

But also with the reflection, "Hey, how did things go with dating this year? Were you going on dates? Were you sending messages? How did those dates go? Were you chivalrous? Were you a dick? Were you kind? Were you going on dates with people who looked good on profiles but obviously weren't compatible?" Look back to, "Hey, you've probably tried this before. What worked, what didn't work?" Let's not make those same mistakes over and over again. And I think with the planning, personally with dating . . . Like I said, I know a lot of people meet their significant others on dating sites. I don't think that's the most direct path. I think the most direct path is, "Who are those key relationships who know people who I would like to date and perhaps they might want to set up some form of introduction?" And so I'm thinking about, "Who are those three people who might know someone, and I'm gonna send them a message right now, and let's line a couple things up." 

Things that you can quantify—being careful on some of these. If you overoptimize towards the number of dates, right, you're going to waste your time on a lot of poor dates. But you know, it's a good thing to check in on: “What am I doing to generate some serendipity surface area? I'm meeting new people, I'm being open that, hey, every person that I meet who I'm somewhat attracted to, I'm gonna be in this frame of, ‘is this a person that I'd like to spend more time with?’” This is a good . . . I like to say, you know, “Hang before you bang.” Like, is this a good—is this someone who I like spending time with? That's a good question to start with.

And then thinking about yourself. “What can I be doing to become the type of person that this person would like to date?” And I don't know, maybe this is just apocryphal, but my perception and my observation is if someone becomes someone who likes themselves. We're confident because we're healthy, we're present when we're in a conversation with someone, we're working towards our vision, whether that's in our business or service, our mission on the world, you're happy . . . That becoming someone who's dateable miraculously finds someone to date. So, yeah, I think that's kind of a two-pronged approach that I would take.

Chris Williamson: You're using an affiliate model to get new dates when you're dating.

Chris Sparks: Most direct path. Going on a dating site . . . There's lots of things . . . There's so much to unpack here. The problem is so much of our cognitive machinery is dedicated towards reassuring ourselves that we're doing a great job. It's like, “Awesome, Christopher,”—like, my alter-ego—"Awesome, Christopher. You send twenty messages this week. You're doing great." And, "Hey, you went on ten dates with people who . . . You know, they love celebrity gossip and you've never watched television in your life. Awesome job. You're going to find The One next day." Right? And it's very easy to justify what we're already doing, and you know, scrolling through Tinder, it's super easy, it doesn't require a lot of effort, it's very passive, but it feels productive. You know, "Hey, we're doing something." Usually, the most direct path, the fastest way to achieve our goals, is really uncomfortable. Asking for help is really uncomfortable. 

But just think about context. Is it more likely that you're going to find your person through a random heap that the algorithm is serving you or through someone who knows you incredibly well and knows another person incredibly well and can make a very warm introduction that makes you look really good where the other person feels safe and open . . . Which of those is more likely to be successful? Yes, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable, but certainly, you're going to have to go on fewer of those dates to get something going than the other way around. And so that's a good question to ask, is, "Are you willing to be a little bit uncomfortable?"

Chris Williamson: I love it, man. Internet marketers out there just thinking in their heads about warm leads versus cold leads right now. Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, so what I've done is I'm kind of re-targeting it, sort of on an affiliate model, and the front end of the funnel is actually being . . . They've got a referral code, and they've come through under this different landing page." So okay, so that's the four steps. Is there anything else to say?

Chris Sparks: It's a good lens to think about things, right? Hey, it's like, something that works for you in another part of your life. Right? Say, "I'm really good at marketing. How can I apply marketing to this other part of my life?" It's crazy that I see someone who is just an absolute outlier in one area of their life. Completely has one area of their life solved, and then in another area just completely wings it. It's like, "This thing that's working for you over here, have you tried that over here?" It's surprising how often that works.

Chris Williamson: Taking those mental models and applying them elsewhere, because as we've identified today, the principles are the same. You have large goals broken down into subtasks broken down into smaller tasks broken down into daily actions, and that slowly gets you to where you want to be. But yeah, the number of businesspeople who are massively out of shape, or the number of good athletes who've got shit relationships, or the number of people who are happily married but their career's going down the pan . . . Like, these things don't happen by accident.

So we've got the framework. Is there anything else to say about the framework there?

Chris Sparks: No, I think that's good. I think viewers will see the template. I think the questions lay it out. A lot of this is just asking yourself questions, attacking the problem from different angles, and listening for answers. And so the more questions you ask, the more angles you approach things from, the more likely you are to elevate something that you might have missed. And hey, just taking it seriously, the process that I laid out for me takes about five hours. You know, it's fractal. If you have one hour, spend one hour. But the idea is here, "Hey, I dedicate one full day or two full days to this. Maybe I increase my chances of achieving this stuff by a hundred percent next year, because I avoid making a bunch of mistakes or I get started in February instead of October." It's worth investing the time now to figure this stuff out, because, hey. This year, when things kick-off, I want to be sprinting. I don't want to be sitting in April having an existential crisis and asking, "What do I want to do with my life?"

Chris Williamson: Again.

Chris Sparks: Now is the time for that crisis. Let's get it out of the way.

Chris Williamson: Doing it again. Yeah. I mean the time as well between Christmas and New Year is such a dead man's zone in any case. What's going on? You know, nothing. You're finishing off the confectionary celebrations, sharing a box of sweets and kind of getting a little bit bored of being with your family and the dog's farted and . . . But you also don't want to go back to work, right? And I think everyone, it might just be me, but everybody gets reflective towards the back end of the year. These stake posts in the ground, we think, "Okay, I was here, probably in the same place. Mom and Dad's house, boyfriend's house, girlfriend's house, whatever, family house with the kids, I'm in the same place as I was this time last year. What's different? Perhaps the location's the same, but what else has changed?" And I think, yeah. It's a natural run-on. It doesn't surprise me that there is such a thing as New Year's resolutions. It's kinda like if there wasn't a name for it, people would come up with one. 

How can people stay motivated? Eighty percent of New Year's resolutions fail. What's the way that we don't just get to the February slump and everything drops off?

Chris Sparks: The way to stay motivated is to not need motivation. If you need motivation to succeed, you're not going to succeed. I think motivation is very flighty. If you personify motivation, it's very wispy and hard to pin down. And so my goal with this exercise is to eliminate the need for motivation throughout the year. Assume that there will be long periods (yes, it happens for me all the time as well) where I don't want to do anything towards my goals, and I'm super unmotivated. How can I set up conditions that I make motivation irrelevant, that I can't help but slip and fall and stumble into making some form of progress toward my goals? How can I make what I want to do easier? 

That's the really key part of that implementation at the end: "What can I do now to start moving, to already start making progress, and to make progress throughout the year easier?" And again, you notice that I'm eating my own dog food, and are like, "Oh my god, Chris just said spend six hours looking at my life, and he wants me to do more." I wonder, if you checked in at regular intervals, say every three months or every month, even if it's just asking yourself questions. Like you said, "Hey, I was sitting in the same chair a month ago. What's different from the last month, or what's changed? What's working?" These types of questions. If you keep asking yourself the same questions, you're going to want to give yourself different answers. 

And so that's what I refer to as "The Improvement Loop." You have the three parts. It's reflection, execution, and planning. The faster that you're going through this loop, the faster that you will make progress. And so that's essentially what I recommend: "Hey, this is the super ten-thousand-foot view, really stepping back, but if you don't come back to these questions throughout the year you're gonna forget about the answers." Return to them, come back to your responses, read them over, remind yourself of why you're doing what you're doing, 'cause it's easy to forget, and just keep thinking about, "Hey, what can I do now to move myself forward a few inches towards this vision?" It's really a marathon and not a sprint.

Chris Williamson: What's the cadence that you do that on, personally? Do you do ninety days?

Chris Sparks: My monthly review is the big one, where I spend a couple hours every month, usually on a Sunday with a nice pot of tea, just going through all the areas of my life and saying, "Hey, what's going on?" This is where I usually pull in a little bit more data so I have things to draw upon, but essentially this is just my check-in. I have a green/yellow/red system. So green: "Awesome. Keep it up. You're doing great. Don't change a thing." Yellow: "All right, at least you're not completely going backwards. Right? You're making some progress. Like, caution. You probably could be doing better. Think about maybe ways to accelerate." Red: you know, "Get your ish together." Like you haven't done anything. Assume that if you don't change anything, nothing's gonna change. Zooming in on those reds. "All right, I don't want to put red down two months in a row. What can I do to change that?"

Quarterly levels a little bit more, it's like, "Hey, do I want to change those goals at all?" It's like maybe that annual goal, I achieved it in Quarter One, where I need a new goal. Or maybe this annual goal of write a book, wow. I've experienced this before, writing a book in a year is like pretty impossible, maybe the end of the year is like, "All right, have a rough draft of the book." That's a good opportunity to scale up or back those goals.

Chris Williamson: Got you. So the monthly is a check-in on cemented goals and the quarterly is allowing for the optionality to sort of switch those up while still optimizing for us to stay on one path. I like that. There's a few other questions that have been good prompts for me. Asking myself, "What would have had to have happened by the end of this year for me to look back on this year and consider it a success?" helps to frame—that might even be one of yours. I made the—this time last year I made the ultimate collaboration of all of your stuff on the internet. It was like your existing Experiment Without Limits book that I'd gotten hold of, plus then whatever the original first draft of that, that's still floating around on Medium was, and then something else, and it was like some prompts that I loved had gone and some of the ones were still there, so yeah. I sort of found myself being very playful with that. 

Other stuff that I think would be useful for everyone to remember is the James Clearism: "I would imagine most people fail at their New Year's resolutions by trying to do too much too soon." Because we just desire that dopamine hit of, "So I've managed to achieved twenty-five percent of the movement towards my one-rep max deadlift I wanted to get by the end of the year within the first two weeks." Like, yeah. Maybe you're gonna fuck your shit up by the end of the month, and then you're injured, and then you can do nothing for the next six months after that. If we set ourselves an appropriate goal, which I guess comes back to the "explore before you exploit" paradigm, you will be able to make progress. I know you're a big fan of direction over speed as well, that as long as you are moving in perfectly the right direction, no matter how slow you're going, you are always getting closer and closer towards the end state that you want to be in.

And also the Bill Gates quote. I think it's, "Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in five." It just shows that we tend to have a big blind spot for how effective compounding can be. Which, probably not all that surprising. But, yeah, those are some really good prompts, man. I'm looking forward to going for it.

Chris Sparks: Can I add an—

Chris Williamson: Oh yeah, drop it on.

Chris Sparks: —an asterisk to one of those. I agree, I think people think far too much about speed and efficiency rather than direction. So thinking about this logically, the best way to waste time, imagine yourself sprinting as fast as you can, faster than you've ever run in your life, but you're going in the opposite direction. So the better that you do, the farther you get away from where you want to go. And what a great way to just waste your time, and—sorry for being dramatic—but your life, to sprint as fast as you can towards things that you don't actually want. So isn't it worth taking a few minutes to think about, you know, "Hey, where are you going?" Maybe a map will help get you there.

But I do think a danger that I do see with achiever types with this, "Oh, I need to know exactly where I'm going, I need to figure out exactly what my business looks like before I quit my job," or, "I need to know exactly what my habits are before I start doing them," is . . . like, have a general idea. Think about all your goals as a rough draft that are written in pencil that you can erase and change any time. It's not the vision, it's the power of the vision. It's not what your vision is, it's what your vision does. It gives you something to head towards. And I think that skill is to course-correct continually, is you're heading in the right general direction, and you're always aware of opportunities either to go more directly to where you want to go, or, "Oh, I need to be going northeast and I'm actually going northwest. All right, I'm gonna start to tilt myself a little bit in this direction."

So yeah, I just wanna make that clear upfront, is you don't need to have a perfect vision in order to start moving forward.

Chris Williamson: Bro, I didn't do my 2019 New Year's resolutions, so like two years ago, I didn't do those until I'd finally finished Atomic Habits, which ended up being halfway through February. I was like, "No, no, no, because—"

Chris Sparks: And it was still incredibly useful, right? It didn't matter that it was until February, yeah.

Chris Williamson: It was super useful, but I'd been too focused on having my direction compass perfectly aligned. I was like, "No, I'm gonna wait, because maybe I can optimize for a little bit more of this." And I'm like, hang on. Ten percent of the year is gone. Ten percent of the year is gone by the time I've actually done this. I could have done some of this and then updated as I went. Yeah, man, it's an interesting time for this sort of stuff, and I hope that it's really prompted people. I also like . . . I'm gonna guess the reason you've put a time limit on this is to stop people from wallowing and obsessing too much within that. It's like, "Oh, shit. I've got to Parkinson's Law this here. I only have ninety minutes to do this particular section. Right, that will do, that's close enough, I'm working hard."

Chris Sparks: Yeah, it serves two purposes. And so what people see as procrastination all the time, is, you know, you can't get yourself to get started, set a timer for five minutes and work until that five minutes is up. At least you're doing something. And so, first, you set that timer. Say, "Okay, I'm going to think about my goals in this area for the next fifteen minutes, until the timer goes off." A lot of people are like, "Okay, great, thirty seconds in I know what I'm doing for the next year. I'm not gonna spend another ten minutes thinking about what I'm going to do all of next year. No, that's not something that I need to do right now." It forces someone to go a little bit deeper. The first answer is usually not the right answer. Let's think about other ways to approach it. Let's widen our vision a little bit. 

So it forces someone to actually use all that time. Keep the pen moving. But also, as I said, it's very easy to rabbit hole on this type of stuff and to go beyond the point of diminishing marginal returns, and so you set a timer. You set a limit. It's like, "All right, I only have this amount of time to figure it out." Secretly you could change it later if you really want to, but you need some sort of answer in order to close that container and move on. So I think it works on both sides.

Chris Williamson: I like it. Any final thoughts about end of year review, planning for the next year, or anything that you need to add in?

Chris Sparks: I always like to say with things like this, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." If this is your first time doing something like this, anything that you're going to do is going to be valuable. It doesn't need to be a perfect process, you don't need to spend a ton of time, but to just take it seriously and see what comes out of it. Right, you're going to be living (knock on wood) multiple years, you'll have multiple shots at this, to improve. So do what you can, take the time to look backwards and think about what you want, to look forwards, do something to put that into motion. And hey, it can be messy, but just take it seriously and do it.

And I also say, hey. I have the brilliant idea . . . You know how much I love forcing functions, given the name of our company. I bet between the two of us it would be a really valuable forcing function as well as pretty illustrative for some viewers if, after we go through this process, maybe we hop on. For you guys who are listening, I have one of these conversation series as well, inspired by Chris, where I have guests on and we do conversations like this. I say we hop on Lunch Hour and we talk about what came out of this annual review and planning. So we'll get some public accountability, but it will allow us to demystify some of this. Open up the curtain and say, hey, what this actually looks like behind the scenes. How's that sound?

Chris Williamson: You're making me put my money where my mouth is now, aren't you?

Chris Sparks: It works.

Chris Williamson: Perfect, man. What's the URL? People want to go and check out this worksheet that they can move through everything, what's the URL that they need to go to?

Chris Sparks: Sure, yeah. A few places that I would point people to. So my company where we work with executives, investors, founders, is Forcing Function. Lots of great resources there, a couple places that I'd point you to. The annual review template which I discussed with Chris today, you can find that at forcingfunction.com/modernwisdom. We're gonna put that up there as free to download for anyone who is listening to this episode. A couple other places you might want to check out. Forcingfunction.com/workbook, the workbook that Chris mentioned earlier. It's my distillation, a hundred pages of all the best things that I have seen to set yourself up for success. In particular, Chapter One, “Goals,” are the prompts that you need to do to discover what you want out of life, what you want to achieve. Those are the ones that I have found work the best. That's also free to download.

A couple of things that I'm really excited about. This is the first time I'll mention it publicly—we're about to release the Forcing Function Library. So my favorite studies, books, articles, resources on productivity, categorized by topic. There's a special section for planning and reviews, and you can see all the places where the things that I talk about originated. My favorite things that I have found wandering around the internet for these topics. So that's Forcing Function Library, forcingfunction.com/library. 

We have our Performance Assessment. Hey, maybe you want some guidance on what is the best place for you to get started in the new year. All these things that could improve, what would help me the most? This is our free quiz to help illuminate your biggest opportunity in the new year. That's forcingfunction.com/assessment. 

And finally—last one, I promise—we started a program this year which I was incredibly excited about where—you know, for the past few years I've only been working one-on-one with about a dozen executives per year, and so, unfortunately, my impact was limited, and for the first time we started a group coaching program called Team Performance Training. We ran the first cohort in September. It was a great success. You can see some of the results that people had on the page really blew me away, and based on that we're excited to announce we're going to be running it again in February, and so we're opening up applications for that in January. You can check that out on our website as well if you want to get notified when those applications are open. That's forcingfunction.com/team-training. 

That's all for me. I always like to think of these conversations as the beginning of a conversation. You know, Chris, as you've said, it's been a year. Now I've forced you, we're going to have to do this again in a month, you're going to have to see me again. If any of you guys had questions, something that I said today resonated, something that we said that you completely disagree with, please let us know. You can get hold of me on Twitter as well. My handle is @sparksremarks.

Chris Williamson: Dude, so good. I have to give another credit to the Experiment Without Limits, which is /workbook, right, on your website? That thing is a magnum opus of productivity. Like I've said to people before, it should be a thousand. The fact that you give that away for free is the most ridiculous thing. And then I remember as well, it was you that introduced me to "Meditations On Moloch," by Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex, and so I went through my favorite articles from around the internet, which I'm gonna guess will get ported into this new library thing, and holy shit, man, if you didn't infect me with the Scott Alexander book when I read that thing. I was like, "What on earth is . . . What?" It was crazy. So yeah, you're an underground hero of this stuff, man. I know that everyone else who is part of this space absolutely adores the work you do, and long may it continue. Thank you for coming on. I'm sure that everyone's taken just so much away from this. If you do end up doing your end of year review and it follows this format, just feel free to tag us wherever you follow us.

That's it, man. I guess we're going to have to loop back in early January and talk about all the ridiculous plans and my innermost fears and dreams for the next year.

Chris Sparks: I can't wait.

Chris Williamson: Peace. Cheers, dude.

Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget that you might not have hit the 'subscribe' button. You could just be playing this podcast. Please just have a little navigate. Christmas is gone, but it's still the season of giving, right? Give me your thumb on the 'subscribe' button. Go on and have a little look, make sure you've pressed it. And happy holidays. Peace!

 
Chris Sparks