Live Peter & Katie - Yearly Review

Likewise. Good to see you again, Katie.

It's funny because we both interviewed each other, so neither of us is going to be the interviewer. We're both going to contribute on this. So we decided our topic would be around yearly reflection and review. What were some of the first things that you thought about as we were putting together this topic?

I thought about the fact that everybody ends up doing it in January, or sorry, in December to get ready for the new year in January. And I also thought about the fact that oftentimes it doesn't stick, right? We do a review, we're like, oh, this happened, I'm gonna do this differently next year. But then you get into next year, life happens, and you kind of forgot what the review was about and what you're gonna do. So I was hoping that some of the things that you'll also share with us is, you know, how do you actually implement the things that you've sort of reviewed and want to do differently or do more of in the new year?

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And as I was super inspired about the theme, I did my whole year yearly review this morning. And what I found is it really helps to see some of the patterns throughout the year. But linked to what you were saying, I think that when we set those new goals and visions and intentions for the following year, what's really helped me is to directly put in the calendar a few core blocks just as a reminder, and then when they pop up, to take action on them.

So, so can you elaborate that a little bit? So you, you have a specific process where once you've done the review, you actually go in and schedule out Reminders?

Yes. So I'll put— typically, generally, I tend to do this and put it in the first 2, 3 weeks of January, and I will just block off a whole day and put some of the core things that I want to implement. And then depending what they are, I might put a new strategy in place, or I might look up a certain new software I'd plan to use, or new habits I want to build, just to ensure that that momentum carries over. I first started to do the yearly reviews with Tony Robbins. I was working with the Tony Robbins coach. I remember I printed his yearly review when we were traveling through Japan because I was working with the results coach then. It was kind of tricky getting the printer and we're in this small hotel in Japan. And then I spent all day and I was writing and doing my review. And one of the things he always says at the end is, while you still have the momentum, take an action. And I remember the time it was linked to doing a TEDx. And then I messaged this woman that I knew was involved or linked to TEDx. And I ended up through that action joining one of her programs that then led to business growth. And I would always trace it back to when I did my yearly review with Tony Robbins in Japan. So I think that momentum and taking actions really helps to anchor some of those things.

Right. And that's about it. I think, you know, taking action on the things that you, that you write down. So the way that I think about it and the way that I've done it with folks in the past is I talk about the rule of one. Do you know that concept? Have you worked with that in the past?

I'm wondering if it's linked to The One Thing by Gary Keller, but otherwise I'm not sure.

Maybe. I typically hear things, see things, and I actually don't know who I should attribute it to. So if I've stolen it from somebody, please do let me know. But so the way that I think about it is When I do a review, I look back and I say, what was one major win or one significant achievement that I had in the past year? Not 3, not 5, but like one thing that comes to mind that was very significant for me and can be categorized as a win. So, it could, for example, be that I helped a client turn their life completely around. It could be that I learned to surf. I mean, it can be anything really, right? But it's this one thing that I'll carry with me from 2024 as a major win. So that's one thing. And then the other thing I talk about is one key lesson, right? So throughout the past year, what was one thing that I've learned that I didn't know before that I want to carry with me into the next year? And I mentioned surfing before. It's more on a personal level, right? So did I actually learn how to not care so much about what other people think about me? I wrote about that today. And so that could be a thing. And then of course, the last one thing is one area of improvement. So what is one thing where I didn't live up to my ambitions this year, my expectations of myself this year that I want to try and improve next year? So that's the rule of one. One major achievement, one key lesson, and one area for improvement.

I find it really helpful to narrow this down. I think it's really great because it helps you to eliminate all the things and actually see what made a difference in your year. One of the things I also realized when I was doing the reviews, because you talked right now about the one key lesson, I realized that a lot of my lessons were linked to the decisions. Originally, I had 2 separate points, core decisions throughout the year, and then major lessons. And then I realized they were the same. When I made this decision, then I learned. Either to repeat it or continue or to shift gear or to stop. So decisions and learning points were really tied together.

So if we are to help the people who are watching this and will be watching this, what is one thing that they can do today, tomorrow, the next day to get started on their yearly review? What would you recommend they do?

I started my yearly review with the timeline overview, and I found it so helpful. What I did was for— I put down each month, and for each month I wrote 2, 3 key sentences. Maybe it was if I traveled that month, maybe it was some of the major work projects, maybe some personal traveling or personal connections or friends visiting, or when I joined this running club, for instance. And what happened was when I had this whole timeline overview, I started to see patterns, especially patterns in my momentum, like when my momentum picked up and then when I hit a bit of a halt. And if I was more traveling, I maybe lost a bit of momentum and on LinkedIn, for instance, or when I was really full on business. And I just saw the whole year with really clear patterns throughout. So I found that the timeline overview, it's a really great moment to appreciate and show gratitude for some of the achievements. Like you said, that one great achievement, but also to better understand maybe if there are some goals that you haven't reached or some goals that you haven't progressed on as much. See, okay, but what happens throughout the year? When did you forget about it? When did you stop prioritizing? Or the opposite. When did you gain momentum and really start to prioritize and what did you do? So I think that really nice yearly overview is super helpful.

So I suspect that you are more organized and focused, hence your business, than most people, right? Certainly than me. And so I'm thinking, well, what if I don't remember what happened in February? Right? Or so sort of add on to what you're talking about, I don't think there's any shame in, for example, going back to your calendar and be like, all right, what actually happened in February? Oh, I went skiing with my son, or I did this thing. Oh yeah, I spoke to that person because we had our first video call or whatever. So that certainly helps me. I need to go back because I otherwise wouldn't remember. And then putting it down on a timeline, yes, that happens in these months. You mentioned, you know, when weren't I doing something as much because I was traveling. I happen to know that you've had your friend visiting these last few days. And so you've skimped a little bit on sharing on LinkedIn. Are those things that we, you know, how do we decide what is big enough to put on the timeline versus what is not? How would you kind of make that distinction?

I did that quite intuitively. And to come back to what you were saying, I definitely use my calendar and I write everything on my calendar. That really helped. And for people who don't, use the calendar as much, then going through photos can be useful, or through social media. For me, everything is on my calendar. I think this sort of micro and macro, what's really worth it, is so subjective. It can be a bit tricky. So we need to decide what were some major events. So for example, here, my friend visiting, I would definitely put that down as a highlight. And that was 5 days. And that was a big part of my December in my mind. But it depends. We see things differently. So it was a big mix of Business, personal, travel, but all within 3, 4 lines, quite condensed. I think it was for me, if I zoom out and look at the month, and which I was doing by my calendar, what really stands out? What was impactful? What was different? What shifted my energy quite a lot? And other— I mean, we can't write down everything. Right.

Another way to get it organized, to just think about it, is sort of, um, here comes another idea. tell me if I stole it from somebody, but it's basically the 5 dimensions of well-being, right? So, when we think about our lives, at least when I think about my life, I try to organize it into like the physical life. So, did I maintain my energy through exercise and nutrition? Did I take care of my physical body? Did I get the sleep that I needed? How has that been throughout the year? And maybe even go back and looking at my journal and saying, well, there are some periods here where I weren't sleeping as well as I could, how does that connect to other things that I was doing at the time? So the physical one is the number one dimension or one of the dimensions. Then there's the emotional one, right? So how was I feeling throughout the year? Were there certain periods where I was more stressed? Did I feel particularly loved at a certain period? You know, when were— how was my emotional state? Has there been seasons to that? So I live in Denmark and I pulled the shades today because it's cold, rainy, and gray. So, of course, some of us are affected by that. But that's another thing to pull in. Social is another dimension. How was I this year socially? Did I attend a lot of events with friends and family? Did I remember to reach out to friends? Did I prioritize those relationships or have they taken a backseat to some other things? And then the last 2 are intellectual. Did my mind grow this year? I met you, so obviously it did. But I feel like intellectually that I was, you know, where was I? What happened? Did I have— you talked about a TED Talk, right? That you were doing a TED Talk. But did something intellectually inspire you, or did you not feed that part of your being And then the last one is spiritual, which for some people will mean religious. For me, it means, was I connected to my values and to how I want to live my life? So that's kind of the 5 dimensions of wellbeing that I use: physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual. That's the way I organize my review once I've gone through the calendar and looked at all these different events.

That's interesting. I do something similar. With the physical, I have health and fitness that I put under 2 separate categories. And in the health, I will look typically more things around sleep, nutrition, stress management. And in the fitness, just purely the exercise part. And then social, definitely that I categorize as relationships. The intellectual part for me was under what I call learning and growth. And then I wrote down the different business accelerators, mentors that I had throughout the year, the books I read, the podcasts I listened to. This is when I did my yearly review and I realized I did slightly too much learning versus implementation. I wrote down all the different programs that I I'm still in Tony Robbins Inner Circle. I just joined Dent Business Accelerator. I had a speaker mentor. I did a bunch of CPDs and I was like, wow, this was a lot of learning, Katie. How about we do more stuff?

Did you say CPDs or CPDs?

CPD, continuous professional development, the coaching.

Okay. Because the other thing is something that makes you feel funny, right?

Yes.

Okay. I was just checking.

And that's the intellectual side. So the learnings, and I also put down a spiritual category. I think looking at the books we've read that have an impact, I realized that was quite profound because a few of them— I can mention a couple. For example, I read The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan. And so focusing on the gain, that was extremely powerful for me, and I kept coming back to it during the year. For those of you who haven't read it, highly recommend this book, The Gap and the Gain. Another wonderful book was Living Untethered by Michael Singer, who also wrote The Untethered Soul. I was reading that over and over and over again. And so putting down the books that I read that had an impact throughout the year sort of helped me to see some of the core ideas and growth I had because those books really impacted me.

So you're saying you basically spent most of your time last year learning and not implementing. Has that— do you ever then— so you've reviewed now 2024. Do you ever go back and look 2023, 2022 and see if there's a pattern across a couple of years or not?

I tell you what I did do. I printed the Tony Robbins reviews, right, in 2019 when I was in Japan. And then I've done it every year since, and I will do it again this year. This year, for now, I've just done a Notion review. And what I have done is I've compared— there's a section where you can write all your goals for your whole lifetime, everything you ever wanted. It's the same every year. It's always the same. Everything from languages I want to speak, to more singing, to the contribution I want to make, to publishing loads of books. And so that's quite funny. I'm very consistent with the goals I've won every single year since 2019, and I do see progress on some of them. So for example, for example, I have published one book. When I started in 2019, I hadn't published any. So I do see some progress, also some that haven't moved at all, but it's quite amusing.

Mostly they're the same And I think on the broad lines, right? For example, learning a new language or living in a certain way, having a certain life. I think that makes a lot of sense. But if you continuously year after year, it's like, I want to run a marathon, for example, then you got to kind of look at your priorities and your habits saying, well, there's probably a reason that I, for the last 4 years, have wanted to run a marathon but never have done it. Maybe it's actually not as important to me as it otherwise could be. I'm thinking about habits or momentum in this stuff too, right? Because we can have all these ideas of what we have wanted to do, we look at it, and then we start planning for next year. How do you think about sort of what caused you to do something, right? What caused— what habit led you to, for example, publish a book? It requires tenacity, it requires consistency, it requires going through some motions. That's the same for the things you want to do next year, right? So do you, do you also evaluate your habits and saying, I need to develop different habits, new habits, improve the ones I have?

Yes, habits, patterns, routines. The most important habit to reach a goal I found for me has been to, at the end of every week, review my top goals for the year. So my weekly review, I have a section this is my yearly goal, this is my yearly goal. And I made a lot of progress on several of my goals this year because every single week I would be checking in and asking myself, how have I progressed? And what happens is after 2, 3 months of doing that, either you start to build momentum and you start to put in place the habits to get the book written, to start running more, or 3, 4, 5, 6 months go by and you've made no progress at all, but you're seeing it every week. And then you pause and you say, okay, It's been half the year. What's happening? Is this still a goal that's important for me? Is it still aligned? Why am I not prioritizing it? What habits can I put in place? And sometimes it's okay to just say, you know what, at the beginning of the year this felt like a core priority, but right now things have shifted and it's not as important. So I ditch goals also, but mostly just reviewing every week helps me to find the time and energy to put in place some of the core habits to get to those goals. How'd you do it? What are your ways of building those new habits?

Well, kind of the same, but I'm afraid that the people who will be watching this are like, oh, that's impossible. I can't sit every week and review my goals, right? Because this is kind of what you and I do for a living, at least with some of our clients or for ourselves. But I do the same thing. So you mentioned Notion before. I run— essentially my entire life runs on a calendar in Notion. And so I have a very good record of What I put on lists and what doesn't get done. And I look at that maybe not weekly, but every 2 weeks certainly I do a review. I've shared sort of the review schedule of CEOs that I work with publicly before, which also dictates that either every week or every 2 weeks, you look back and saying, how does my actions correspond to the goals I've set for myself? And what are some of the things that blocked it? What were some of the unexpected events that caused this to be shifted and what can I do about that going forward? But I also think that for me at least, I reserve time and space to be a little more fluid now than I used to be. So I may have some goals and some plans, but I allow myself, without being too strict on myself, to actually say, you know what, yeah, maybe I'm not going to do this thing anyway. So I don't get to the end of the year and feel like a failure because I didn't run the 5 marathons that I planned, but I only ran 3, right? Not that I run marathons, but as an example.

Yes, I think flexibility helps a lot. And I also feel there's a big difference between the should goals and the goals that we generally want. So I think sometimes we put down goals and I've definitely done this even more in business, I think, than in personal life. I feel like this is a goal or project I should have. It looks good. It suits my progress and development. And then some way through the year, I'm like, actually, I'm not that excited about it. I don't actually want to do this. So I think being very mindful of why we're setting those goals or vision in the first place, what's so important about it to us? Why does it matter? What are we hoping to get out of achieving this goal? What progress are we trying to see as if our own Well-being, fulfillment? Is it for greater contribution? But what is the idea behind the goal? Not just so it's a tick box and it looks good on paper. I think that's very important.

A year is also a long time, right? I mean, so, and I think that will be super helpful if we're sort of switching into what is your planning for 2025 process, right? So how many goals should you have for the year, quote unquote? Right? Versus how many for half year, the quarter, for the week. In my mind, or at least I encourage people to limit them to like 3 major goals for the year because otherwise it becomes difficult to prioritize and there are not that many things that can be that important that you should dedicate the next 12 months to it. So an example of one of a goal for 2025 could be for a lot of people who at least come to me is get happy and healthy again, right? That could be a major goal for 2025. And then a sub-goal underneath that could be, okay, that means spending more time with my family. That means getting back to my health routine. That means, you know, maybe a third thing. And then you break that further down and you say, okay, in order for me to spend more time with my family, how am I going to do that? And then you get down to the tactics on a week-to-week basis. So that's how I think about the strategic planning when I work with clients for 2025. Do you do something similar or do you probably have a more sophisticated process? I suspect.

Absolutely not. I think 3 goals is great. I have generally 3 goals and 3 bonus goals that I add that were sort of nice to have that I keep in the back of my mind, but they're not the core priority. I like this idea that you said of breaking it down. If that's the overarching goal, For instance, one of my goals for next year is to have a more lean business. So really stop reinventing the wheel and systems and have it all in place and more lean and outsourcing and automating and everything more lean. But then I could have sub-goals under that. It could be lean, consistent business as a sub-goal, regular scheduling via LinkedIn or outsourcing or whatever it is. So I like this idea of having sub-goals. One of the things that I find so important when we reset for the year ahead is to review our vision, purpose, values. I think this can be done more often, but if we need to do it at any moment, it's kind of nice to pause and think, okay, is that still my overall vision, my purpose? Am I still aligned with my values? In my case, not much changed, but I still wrote it all down. I still reviewed it. I still anchored it. And I thought, yeah, that still works.

And, and, and, and I agree with you there. Another thing that maybe we, before we jump into the future, we also should talk about, do you do an end-of-year purge?

Like elimination?

Yeah, well, not of humans, but of things, right? So, so I don't know if it was Marie Kondo that inspired me to think about this or, or somebody else, but some years ago I started thinking about at the end of the year, I started saying, okay, What is it that is unnecessary in my life? Physically unnecessary. So, I live in a house, right? I have an attic. I have a garage. As you can imagine, I have a bunch of stuff that I really don't need. So, that's the physical stuff. I go through and I actually throw out or donate or find some way to discard of stuff that I don't need on the physical side. I do the same thing digitally, right? So, I go through all my file structures and be like, okay, I've saved these documents, this PDF about this topic. from 15 years ago. I probably don't need that anymore. So, I try to do a digital one. I do a sort of— you talked about relationships before. I honestly also do that. I look at what were the relationships that this year sort of have ran their course. I've spent energy on people or energy on situations that I don't want to do next year. So, I'm kind of just going to park that on the side. And so that's the year-end purge. I kind of go through the different areas of life, the different 5 stages of well-being, as I mentioned, and I decide what am I not going to take into next year.

I do this quite regularly. And as I did my timeline and my review and also thought the different programs I was part of or the different clients I worked with or projects I did, I also realized the ones that I felt were the most impactful and I enjoyed more. But I think writing it down is quite nice. And during the year, I do this quite often at the end of the month. Generally, I think, what time could I have spent differently? What were some activities that didn't really add much to my life or my work? And same with relationships. I think I do it quite intuitively. I think after a while, when we want to live more intentionally and lead our life more intentionally, we Automatically have this inner compass of this feels aligned and this doesn't, and when it doesn't, we just slowly walk away and focus more on what's most aligned.

So how do you feel about 2024? What what what what score would you give yourself on on living the intentional life that you set out to do when you started the year?

I was very intentional. I'd say this year, they on intentionality very high. I say it was very up and down, a lot more than 2023 was high pretty much the whole year, very little lows. And this was more like one month high, one month low, one month high in terms of my energy or time or focus or momentum or everything. So I'd say it was pretty more like rock and roll. And that's why next year I'm like lean, consistent, clear, and a little more like stable, grounded, but also in my energy and Yes, that's how I feel. How do you feel about 2024?

So my 2024 is a year that I look forward to ending because I ended up having a year where I finished 2023 incredibly strong. I made some changes back then and decided to do something else for 2024, and then I just couldn't get out of the gate. I just didn't do what I had told myself I wanted to do. And so I was slugging along in the spring, then I took 6 weeks off in the summer. I thought, now I'm gonna have energy and come back. I didn't. So, so this year for me has been sort of more down than up, uh, but as you can see, I'm in good spirits. It's all good, you know. I know I've been in showbiz long enough to know that it goes up and it goes down. Um, so as I think about next year, I think about simplification also. I think about a little bit to your point about intentionality. I'm like, I'm not going to be doing all the things I tried to do or wanted to do when I started this year and then didn't do. Because the reason I didn't do it was it was paralysis, not by analysis, but paralysis because of complication. So that's the main thing for me for this year is to further simplify how I spend my time and energy and go back to what I did in '21 and '22, which was very narrow-minded and focused on a few, 3 priorities. And this year I probably put like 7 or 8 on the board and I shouldn't have.

Very similar to my perspective. I also put down as one of the core themes, very clear focus and trusting the process. Because I also realized with my rock and roll this year, I was also constantly changing strategies. Let me work with companies. Let me work with business owners. Let me do more speaking. Let me go on writing. And as I reviewed the whole year, I was changing every 5 minutes. It didn't feel like it, but I was. So, I think this idea of more clear focus, more lean, and clear trust, I think it's very helpful. Right.

So, Katie, we're going to be a little bit cognizant of time, I think. What is something that we should leave the audience with as they think about doing their review and their plan for next year? What's a simple tip we can give them?

The way I broke it down was under 3 Rs: review, reflect, and reset. And when you review, you can go through both the business and the personal, the core goals, things like finance goals, team performance. And then in the reflection, maybe we'll look a bit more at the personal things, like you said, the 5 areas of wellbeing, for example, and look a bit more how our energy was throughout the year, how we spent our time. And then in the reset, that's where we review the vision, the purpose, the values, and also set goals for the year ahead. And maybe think of some of those habits that can help us to achieve those goals. I think those 3 Rs are really helpful when we do a yearly review and set the pace for the next year.

I couldn't agree more. And I think my parting remarks would be make sure it's achievable, right? So keep it simple, set it up in a way that you can easily come back to it. You're allowed to change it along the year, but you don't need to write a novel. It can be a simple 1 or 2 pager that basically outlines what it is that you want to accomplish next year based on what you did this year.

Amazing. So great to be here with you, Peter. And if anyone has any comments, feel free to write. We'll be checking the comments after the live has ended, so we will answer you afterwards.