2021 Mid-Year Review with W.R.A.P.

Hi everyone, my name is Matt and welcome to another episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I'm so happy to be sharing in this episode with you today, and I apologize for the unexpected break that I took. I did about 25 episodes and just decided to take a little bit of a break because I had a really busy May, and then that turned into kind of a busy June. And I know that's the kind of cycle that we often get into, but now that we're at the mid-year part of 2021. I want to share with you how I'm doing my mid-year review using the WRAP method that we've talked about before for reviewing your week, and that is what are your wins, what are the results of the aspirations that you had at the beginning of the year, and then what are some ways that we can pivot going into the remaining part of 2021. So that's what we're going to be talking about in the show today. The only other thing that I want to tell you about before we get started is is that if you want to get my email newsletter, it's the place where I publish twice a week. It's been a lot of fun for me. There is the Tuesday, you know, the To-Do's Day newsletter for productivity, and then I have the Weekly Wrap, which is like my favorite things that I've read, seen, or listened to on the internet, or just like as books or whatever off the internet as well in the past week. So make sure you check that out. There is a link in the show notes that you can go to and sign up. But for now, Now let's go ahead and get into the show. The days are long, but the years are short. We're 50% of the way through 2021 already. So that saying has been popping into my head a lot lately. And one of the things that we can do in the middle of the year, especially like here in the US, we have a long weekend coming up, holiday weekend. July 4th for Independence Day. And so it's a really good time of the year to take an extra 30 minutes out of your day or out of your weekend to ask yourself 4 really simple questions, 4 simple prompts that I'm going to give to you in just a moment that help you review the year that you've had so far so that you can better understand any kind of pivots or adjustments or even just like giving yourself more confidence on like, hey, I'm on a really good path, I'm going to keep going this direction. The method that we're going to be using for this mid-year review is the same one that we've been using for our weekly reviews so far this year. And it's that WRAP method, W-R-A-P. And what those 4 letters stand for are wins, results, aspirations, and pivots. So let me just break that down for you real quickly so you can know how I'm answering these and how you can use them as well. The first one is just very self-explanatory, is what are the wins? So So think back to the last, you know, several months, the last 6 months, and thinking what were the wins? What were the things that went well? And the thing that makes this really useful as you're getting used to this is being able obviously to do like a consistent wrap review throughout the weeks or even the months of the year. So that way you can actually look and see like, this is what I've been writing about. These are the things that I've wanted to do. This is to me one of the best cases for being like productive and being a planner and a reviewer is that it gives you like a really tangible record of looking back and saying these are the things that I wanted to do, these were my aspirations. We'll talk about those in a second. So that way you can really see like these were my wins because you've been reviewing them and accounting for them as the year has gone on. So that's the first one. That's what the W stands for, our wins. The second element in your wrap review are the results, and I'm going to do the next two together because they work together, and it's the results of your aspirations. And so if you can think of those working together in tandem, like what did you aspire to do at the beginning of the year? And then what were the results of those aspirations? So basically what were your goals and how are you doing on them? That's the easiest way to think about it. And then the fourth and final element of your wrap review is any kind of pivot that you need to make. So maybe something that you thought was really important at the beginning of the year, you found that's not as important. Maybe it's something that has become a lot more important. Maybe it's something that you need to change. And so just thinking mindfully, intentionally about what kind of pivots you want to make as you go into the remaining part of the year is an important way to think about how you can be successful and how you can be intentionally mindful and productive about the things that you want to accomplish. Now I want to give you a quick wrap version of my own mid-year recap because some of it involves you and has impact on you. Because the biggest thing that I've, you know, maybe ever done in my life besides get married and have kids is that I went full-time on my YouTube channel, on my email newsletter. I went full-time as a creator at the beginning of 2021. And so when you think about it in those terms, that's a really big win for me. I'd been thinking about this for multiple years and even, If you saw my 10-year overnight success story, this is something that's been on my mind for 10 years. And so it's a huge, massive, you know, win of a lifetime to actually make the decision and go forward for this. Another couple of big wins that I had from a content side is that I've been really prolific and productive with getting new content out. I've had over 100, about 100 written pieces. Those are, that's a lot of written content, especially for someone who has kind of like made his audience on YouTube. That was maybe not something that I expected to do, but it was really a win. And we'll talk about, like, even though it's not something I expected, you know, I didn't aspire to do it, what were the results? We're going to talk about that in just a second for me. But those were like my two biggest wins: making the switch to full-time creator and writing, producing, creating. If you include the podcast and these YouTube videos, I have about 150 unique pieces of published content that I've created so far just this year. And that's a really big win from a creator perspective. Now let's shift a little bit into the results and aspirations part of the review, because this is where you really look at— this is what I intended to do, this has been the results again, and then how do I pivot? That's what we'll talk about next. So we talk about results and aspirations together, and the biggest thing that I aspire to do as a full-time creator— this is what drove a lot of my decision, it drove a lot of my timeline, it also drove a lot of the anxiety before and even still after going full-time— is that I wanted to replace my salary-level income as a creator within 3 to 6 months, and I had been building up, saving up to do that, so I was pretty close to it. I aspired to replace 100% of the income, and right now I think I'm at around like 70, maybe 80% of it. The thing that I find really cool within like some of this stress and how it's like forcing me to grow and come to grips with some of the like money mindset issues that I've had in the past, even though the like financial side of full-time creator has not been, you know, exactly what I aspired for it to be, like the results have not been there just yet, I haven't at all had the moment or like sinking feeling of, oh my gosh, I can't do this. Oh no, I need to go get a job. I'm not making enough money. I had a bad month. No salary is coming in. What the hell am I gonna do? What it's inspired me to do is like like an entrepreneur to figure it out, to create better things for you, to do like coaching or consulting. It's a little tricky talking about money on YouTube. In fact, it's not really that tricky. If I had— and I'll probably do a video about like, here's how much I make on YouTube or as a full-time creator, because those videos actually do really well. But that is the biggest one for me that in terms of aspiration and kind of the results of that not lining up to what I want it to be. The other thing from a content perspective that, you know, aspiration versus results didn't really line up actually is that I wanted to like do weekly YouTube videos. And I definitely thought to myself before this year started, like, well, I'm a full-time creator now, full-time YouTuber. I'm easily going to be able to get a new YouTube video out every week. And that obviously has not been the case. I want to experiment with maybe being a little bit less consistent on YouTube, but making videos that A, I'm really excited about, that feel like is challenging me to be a better YouTuber and a better video creator. Because I can be honest, the videos that are easy for me to create and just like crank out every week, brain dump information on you and be like, cool, got a new video out. I don't know if that's the best thing. And so I have a video coming out like the week of July 12th that was just a fun, only 3-minute video, but a fun, more highly produced video that I'm really excited to share with you because I want to see what other kind of videos I can make on YouTube? And how can I increase the, like, the, the just the production level? How can I make them better for you? How can I be a higher quality YouTuber for you? So that's one of the questions that I'm asking myself. And I guess if you were to say there's going to be a pivot, it's going to be a pivot towards like, how can I make something super high quality that I'm really proud of? The final element of the RAP review method is that P, that P for pivot. I've already mentioned a couple of these things. I'm pivoting towards doing more high-quality produced content videos on YouTube. I'm really interested to see how those play out, especially during the summer months, because summer has always been a little slow for me on YouTube, and so I'm using it as more of an experimental time. And I'm also going to be writing a bit more. I've already been writing a bit more, so I guess I'm kind of staying the course on how I want to integrate writing more into my workflow and into my publication flow. The final pivot that I'm going to make, and this feels a little scary for me to say, and I don't know even now how much I'm actually going to lean into it, but I'm going to be talking a lot more about, say, like lifestyle productivity, doing more with apps and systems and workflows than just focusing on the Bullet Journal as much as I, as much as I have in the past 3 years. I'll probably be talking more about the creator economy, talking more about how creativity and productivity overlap. Like, how do creators and artists get more work done? How do they focus on the right things? I'll be totally honest with you, I think I, I wouldn't say I've said everything about the Bullet Journal that I'm capable of saying, but I've said most of those things. And I'd rather say and share and make more videos about things that I'm really excited about talking about for the first time publicly instead of being like, hmm, what is the 100th video that I can make about the Bullet Journal? And like, how can I talk about collections in a way that is really interesting? That to me, even just when I say it out loud, isn't very interesting. And so I'm still going to be integrating and like showing you how I'm like doing all these things in the Bullet Journal. But in terms of explaining it or giving you a new layout or spread every week, You've probably noticed I'm not the kind of person who is going to change up their system or their spread or their layout very often. I like testing some new things sometimes, and when I do that, I'll share them with you. But trying to come up with the 100th angle on how to talk about the Bullet Journal so that the YouTube algorithm picks it up, and I don't know. That's just not something for me right now. I want to be sharing things with you that I am interested and excited about. Because I think that you'll be interested and excited about those things as well. So thank you so much for watching this video. I'm excited to share it with you. I'm excited for the second half of 2021. If I'm being totally honest, and I wanna be totally honest with you, there are still those anxieties and fears and stresses around, how much of this is the right thing? I know it's just an alignment of the head and the heart. It's like, I know this is the right thing, but then like, my heart gets a little scared sometimes, like, ooh, is it going to be the right thing? And then sometimes I'll believe something so strongly, be like, the heart is in the right place, but the head is like, well, you know, logically this probably isn't the right decision to make. So I'm working more on aligning like the head and the heart. Maybe that's a whole other thing that I could talk about, but thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. This is also going out as a podcast version. So you check this out as well. We're going into the second half of 2021, and I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. If you If you want to make sure that you're getting emails from me, please sign up to my email list as well. There is a link in the description below so that you can get these regular emails from me. Also a bunch of these like email courses that I'm going to be launching over the next couple of weeks. Okay. Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next video, on the next pod. And yeah, let's have a great second half of 2021. Thanks everybody. Bye.