It is been around 6 weeks ago. To be honest, I felt emotionally cringed and generally not in a too good shape back then. Close friends told me, that from an outer perspective this was totally understandable... . A lot was happening all at once - the third moval within a year and a sad yearday - just to name two.
As cognition alone did not affect my emotions sustainably I thought of taking dedicated time to step back and reflect.
To see and celebrate possible successes.
To identify and prioritize possible improvement areas.
To then take meaningful next step(s).
Sounds like a retrospective, doesn't it?
With that an experiment was born: instead of doing just another "big" personal retropective once a year I asked myself: Why not start doing smaller retrospectives throughout the year?
Six weeks ago I just started by jotting down all the good stuff (the 'heart side'). Surprisingly I remembered a lot I normally quickly forget during the daily grind. After that I wrote down the stuff which I wanted to change and improve (the ++ side). I identified three improvement areas and chose two to approach next. To make sure I could tackle them, I added two concrete actions each to be able to check (or even: measure) progress.
Four weeks ago, these "personal retro postits" moved first to my new home. Of course they are at a visible place to let the successes sink in more.
Yesterday I celebrated the first month in the new home. A perfect occasion to have the next retrospective today...
How about you? Do you do something like personal retrospectives? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts!
note: this blogpost also appeared on blog.cosima-laube.de
Top comments (8)
I have been more down than usual which is a common thing for me. I have a note pad and write down what I'm doing computer wise even it's just downloading dependencies or reading on topics. So I can say, hey you managed to do that today, nice work. Back to being down, I just don't feel employable, I have had a stress headache since yesterday and been taking triple dose sinus tablets cause they look like paracetamol. I'm tired of life. Not sucidcal, just tired
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your thoughts. I really hope you felt less tired soon.
Thank you for listening, I was in a bad place last week, angry neighbor riuning the vibe of the place.
Sun great for sleep, vitamin D and helps lift ones mood.
Think I might look up healthy tips app that has a calendar to remind people. 'Go out side look at the sky, your bums sore, coding can wait'. Surely someone's written one.
You're welcome.
That app thing is a good keyword: I tried to track the things I wanted to change on a piece of paper the last 6 weeks. Got quite tedious. So I started using the "Loop Habit App" (see play.google.com/store/apps/details...) which is open source.
You can add freely for what & when/how often it should remind you. So far I can really recommend it. :-)
Very good. Have a great rest of the week
" Why not start doing smaller retrospectives throughout the year?" - The Agile approach to retrospective thought.
Love it, thanks for the article.
bit unfair I can not delete my other comment. Sigh, going to get some sun.
Umh, strange. I could delete at least my comments. Did the sun help?