Write down what you expect from a project, then compare it to what actually happened six months later. The gap shows your blind spots, reveals where you're strong or weak, and breaks the habit of assuming everything will go wrong.
Today I want to tell you about a technique borrowed and refined from the great Peter Drucker that has helped me on a whole range of things. In a famous 1999 article, Drucker suggested that whenever we make an important decision or take a key action, we write down in advance what we expect will happen. And then 9 months or 12 months later, we compare the actual results to our expectations. Now I do a modified version of this. Every six months, for every important project I'm working on, I write a paragraph or two about what I expect will unfold over the next half year. Now I don't read it again; I simply stick it in Dropbox. But I make sure there's a calendar notification that goes off a half year later, and when it does, six months later, ping! I then read what I call my Drucker memo and compare how much my expectations matched. The reality of what really happened. Now, this is a useful technique for at least 3 reasons. First, it helps you see your blind spots. Many times problems seem obvious in retrospect, and when you start seeing problems in retrospect, you get a lot better at identifying and avoiding problems prospectively. Second, as Drucker says in this article, this is a great way to understand your strengths. And the question you should be asking yourself is, what does the gap between what you expected and what really happen reveal about what you're good at and, equally important, what you're not so good at. We know that high performance depends on focusing on our strengths, doing what we're good at, and trying to delegate or outsource what we're not so good at. This technique can help you see that distinction a little more sharply. Third, this technique has made me a little bolder. Now, the reason for that is that I noticed a pattern in my expectations that I was consistently a little too pessimistic. A little too concerned about things going awry. And as a consequence of that, I was becoming a little too skittish about trying new things. Once I saw that pattern and realized that some of my predictions were off, I became a little more emboldened to try new stuff or do things in new ways. So give this one a try. Write down what you expect will happen. Look at those expectations 6 months or a year later and see what you learn. For me, it's been revelatory, and I hope it will be for you.
