Bill Gallagher walks through his year-end review routine: pull last year's one-page plan, review the calendar week-by-week and mark outcomes green, yellow, or red, list wins and failures, then build a five-year vision and a new one-page plan with 90-day habits.
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Foreign. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast, one of the scaling coaches around the world. I want to share with you my year end practices, what I do to end my year and start a new year, the things that I've learned as part of Scaling up and all the other work that I've done over the year and then how kind of it's modified but over the years. So I'm right in the middle of doing that for the last couple weeks, really on and off during this period. So I'm going to take you through what I do. The first thing that I do is I pull out all of the structures that I created last year. So my plan. So this is my one page plan for last year. I don't want you to see it, I don't want you to see the detail of it. So this is my plan and down below are all the things in the year and the quarter. And I go through those things and I color code them, red, green, yellow. So if they're mostly done or on the way to being done at the year end, those go into the yellow category. If they're totally done, they go green. And if I really swung and missed, if I failed, if I forgot all about them, those things get cut to red, green, yellow. So that's the bottom part of this one page plan here. Red, green, yellow. And then I also take out. So I usually create a visual for my year. This is my like image vision board kind of thing that I created just in PowerPoint or Keynote or whatever. And I lay out and I create a vision of what I did on my thing for the year. So I pull out that for the last year and the other, I look at that, I look back through my calendar, I go back through week by week by week and I see what happened, what did I do during the year, how did it all go? What I notice is that again and again, as we go through the year and we reflect on the year, we're in the moment. So our memory is keyed to the last few weeks, maybe even a quarter, but really definitely not feeling and seeing all the different spaces that we went through, the places, the accomplishments of that kind of thing over the course of the year. So I go week by week, starting January 1, 2020, I look at how the first quarter went and then moving to the second quarter and I look as I go through at everything that happened. The other thing that I do is I open my photo stream. If you're like me, many people now we take Lots of pictures with our phones and those can also help to create and bring to life to remind you of what did you do over the course of the year? So I look through all those things now. Looking through my vision board, looking through my plan, looking through my calendar, looking through my photo stream and finally looking through any personal dashboard. So if you track metrics in a company or personal dashboard, your workout, you know, monitoring and that kind of thing, I look through all that kind of stuff and as I'm doing it, I keep two columns. The good stuff and the bad stuff. What do I feel great about and what kind of sucked for me? Where? What am I proud of, grateful for all the good, the green, you like, all that great stuff. And then everything that didn't go well that I really need to tell the truth about things that I thought I was going to do and just failed or forgot or like all that. So I keep a. Or just maybe they happen to me right? This year a lot of things happen to us that we didn't expect on a global basis. So I keep two lists here now of the good and the bad. And I really like take it all in. I tell the truth to myself and to the people around me. I begin to then share it with the people that I work with, with my wife, with other important friends, family. If you're in a mastermind or a forum group or that kind of thing, you can share with those people as well. What do you notice that went in? The last thing that I do to complete my review of the year is ask myself what did I learn? So what did I learn over the course of the year that I want to make sure that I distill? And hopefully we learn both from the good things and the bad things. We learn from what went well that we want to keep doing or do more of and we learn from the bad things that we want to stop doing or do differently in the future. So I take a minute to distill what did I learn and I share the feeling and the learning of all of that with those important people around me. My why family members, forum mates, mastermind folks, key people on my team, that kind of thing. So that is kind of reviewing the year and taking stock of everything that happened. Then the next thing I do before I plan the new year is I ritualize the completion. So sometime around this year end, maybe before, on New Year's Day, I put the year in the past. I. I say okay, this year, right? As I record this now, it's the last day of 2020. We put 20, 20 in the past and we say that was that. And I let it go, all the good, the bad and that kind of thing. And I let myself sort of be with all of it and ritualize. Now, you could do that by tearing up a little piece of paper and casting it into some water, doing that in an environmentally appropriate way, or maybe burning up all your notes, that kind of thing. The point of this is not to lose your notes. It's great actually to kind of keep those things and be able to refer to them as you plan for the new year. But we want to create and sort of lock in that last year's done, it's never happening again. Now, some things from last year may happen again, but last year as it was, was whole and unique and it's over. So having a time where we move from one period to the next as we measure periods, right, it's all sort of artificial in that helps us mentally to get to a clean slate. So I really want to get to a whole clean slate around the year. And what lays ahead of me now, standing in kind of this fresh place of I let go of the old year. I cried about it, I laughed about it. I said thank you. I was grateful for things, right? That whole world of it. Oh, by the way, new practice that I learned recently from Lynn Twist, former guest of the show Lovely Human Being, head of the Pachamama alliance, the soul of money, all that kind of thing. Been a speaker at our summits and so on. Lind Twist talked about taking stock of what we're really proud of and what we're grateful for. So being proud of the things that you did is all in that good column. And then being grateful for the things that came to you, that you benefited from them. She also talks about what did we learn? I been doing that one for a while. So distilling out what you learn and then bring some gratitude to that can maybe help as part of your ritual practice to get to kind of this blank slate where it's a wide open. It's a new year, right? You want to begin to think about that. So with that in mind, then I start to think about the future. I pick a particular time horizon. So I get a blank one of these. I put a link to this particular worksheet that I use, the one page personal plan, my version of it for scalingcoach.com so I put that version in the description. I'll put it in the comments as well so that everyone has a copy of that if you want that so throwing it up in the comments right now. It's also in the description of this recording here, but in that I start with a blank one and I pick a time horizon 5, 10, 20, 30 years in the future, at least 5 years. Even if you're fairly young, pick a time horizon that's five years or more in the future. The most common one that I use is 10 years. From time to time I will take that up a notch and I'll go out 20 or 30 years and pick a particular date horizon or whatever, but the minimum that I would do is five years. So now I think about myself in that five year forward period in a kind of a mini version of a vivid vision. We've talked about vivid vision, Jim Collins term for a longer term picture. We've talked with Brian Scudamore about his process for that. For this one I really want to settle first. Maybe you do some meditation, you go to an inspiring place, you just clear yourself, you get all in a good vibe. I like to do a body scan and some breathing work so I'm really there. And then with my eyes closed, I imagine it's this future date. And I imagine myself getting up in the morning, what time I arise, what it feels and smells and looks like and sounds like and. And then going through my day, what happens in the day, what my experience of all of it is in the future. So I imagine this day, the same day in the future and what my life looks like. Going to work, seeing my family, going about my fun and my hobbies and my friends and all of that kind of thing. And I visualize that. Then when I'm done enough of like a whole day there, I stop, I open my eyes and I just write down everything that I see, everything that comes to mind. And then I go over to a blank worksheet like this. Now this is an Excel sheet or you can open it in numbers or whatever you use. And I start to type in all my things for this long term piece. Where do I Want to be 5, 10, 20, 30 years in the future? Pick one time horizon. And a great thing to make this really work well is to Amazon imagine your age and the age of key family members, key people in your life. So by that I mean that if you think about how old will your parents be? If you have children, how old will your children be? That creates a very specific picture of what you'll be dealing with at different life stages in addition to your own age. It's often easier to see and imagine yourself when you Imagine the people around you, we project ourselves forward and back in a very positive way, or negative for that matter. But. But there's always a certain amount of self delusion in our own assessment. So if you think about the other people around you, what age they'll be, that'll help to create that picture of your stage of life. So thinking about that visualization, writing down all the things that I got there, then I examine my life across these dimensions here. So what's my relationship like? What do I do with my family and my friends? What are the achievements that I've had in my professional life and in my health? How am I doing in terms of my spiritual or purpose centered kinds of things, that sort of enduring and eternal kind of stuff. What are my rituals and hobbies? What are the regular routines and things like that that are part of my every year? And then wealth and security. And in wealth and security, I find it's not so helpful for most people to pick a number because most of us aren't super motivated by abstract things like numbers. But if you translate a number into a quality of life, your home is paid for, you've upgraded this, you have so many years of continuous income, or you have a certain level of income available to you, think about what it buys you in terms of time, the wealth that you created rather than X million dollars or whatever your particular goal may be. So now with that long term thing in mind, now we can begin to think one year out. So if I'm planning this and I'll be doing mine, I haven't yet finished my whole plan for the coming year for 2021, but over the coming couple of days I will finish up my 2021 plan. Now with the long term thing set in and written out in some sketch form and then with some alignment and sharing with my partner or other important people in my. I always share my long term vision with my wife and partner and I may share aspects of it with other people. People like family members, kids, parents, that kind of thing, whatever's relevant to them. Not everybody wants to hear all of your hopes and dreams, but I'll share the relevant pieces with that, make sure people are aligned, incorporate any feedback like that. Now with that in mind, I will create a detailed plan for the coming year. Where do I want to be, what do I want to accomplish, what activities do I want to do by this time next year? So I'll lay out then in the middle of this form what's coming up in the year ahead that I envision. And then from that I'll break down. So what do I need to get started? What are the actions I need to get started or stop doing start or stop doing in the coming year? So maybe you're going to stop eating ice cream every night or maybe you're going to. I don't eat it every night, but I do love ice cream. Maybe you're going to start doing exercising earlier in the day or whatever it might be for you. You're going to start a new hobby or you're going to book in a date night or you're going to start managing your finances differently or you're going to start reserving cash for your taxes earlier. Whatever the case may be, you're going to build in new habits for the next 90 days that will kick off your year and help you get to the year end. So that's the plan long term, one year and then the 90 days and we break all that out in this detailed thing, the one page strategic plan. And that's really helpful. Then we can keep this alive in a couple of different ways. We can. If you want to do like I do, you can create a visual collage, like take some of the key elements. I go to Google or wherever I want to find images and I start throwing images and then I organize them in a pleasing way and I print out a slide or a page with my vision for the year ahead and what do I want to accomplish And I stick that around. I stick it in my office, I stick it in my bedroom, bathroom, places like that, where I'm going to see it on a regular basis. Just remind me subconsciously about what I'm creating for the year in a very subtle way. So I'll look at this in the background all the time. And then the plan I'll review every month and every quarter with the people in my life, with my mastermind, my forum group, that kind of thing. I'll look at how I'm doing in the year and I'll see what corrective actions I need to take. You might even do more. I know some people that look at their plan every week and true up to it and some of those people accomplish a lot more than I do in my goal. So the more that you sort of truing up to this plan and correcting your actions and seeing where you're getting off track, really looking forensically at how you get led astray can make a difference. I find I do enough of this plan. I check in monthly, quarterly, I've done enough and I moved it along and I accomplished the vast majority. Not everything that I set out to do and and certainly this last year was a reminder. Many of the things that I set out to do in 2020 got waylaid by the particular situations of 2020 which were unique. Except every year is a Little bit unique. 2020 was unique in a common global fashion and highly disruptive but it also accelerated things. As I look over this last year, many of the things that I wanted to accomplish this last year didn't happen at all but some of the things that I'd set out for three and five years in the future I actually happened this year. So they got moved up with the pressures of moving all online accelerating the way that we work. Anyway, there you go. So the one page personal plan is in the description and in the comments there below. I hope that's useful to you. Thanks again for listening for watching. My name is Bill Gallagher scalingcoach.com thanks. Bye bye. Happy New Year. All. Right.
