Productivity Academy Live Q&A – Episode 101

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You can watch the video for the last episode recorded on November 7, 2019, above, or you can review the transcript below.

In this episode we talked about:

  • 90 Day review, the HOW and the WHY?

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Hey, it’s Adam Moody. Welcome to the productivity Academy live Q and A, this is number 101. So just past the first 100 episodes last week, and this week is gonna just get rolling right along. We’re going to be talking about the 90 Day Review kind of the why and the how, which is a good one actually to last week for Episode 100.

We were talking about you know, after hundred episodes was something that I’ve noticed a lot of what do I still think is the most important and it was mostly dealing with the with the daily review and again, the how and the why and it actually popped up on my calendar.

I had a reminder that at the end of this week is my 90 Day Review and kind of planning cycle so I was like, Oh, this is perfect, follow it so good happenstance there But anyways, real quick. If you’re watching this live go ahead you can ask any additional questions will answer those as time allows for catching the replay or just checking this out on YouTube.

Thanks for watching, you can stay up to date by hitting the subscribe button. You can also come join us in the free Facebook group, you can find the link below you do have to answer some really tough questions like, are you into productivity and time management and automation.

And a couple others just want to make sure that we’ve got a group of people who are focused on the same things and interested in want to help each other out. So with that said, let’s get into it. Let me close down one of these screens. It’s kind of weird looking at myself talking for so long. But yeah, the big thing I wanted to talk about is the 90 Day Review, and this got started actually, I can’t think exactly when been doing it for several years now.

And a lot of journals, a lot of planning cycles work out of 90 day cycles. And you might say, well, that’s just maybe the way it happened. But I think it came down naturally right? It’s out of you’ve got a year breaks up into quarters that’s 90 days or 12 weeks, and it also works just kind of on the human timescale because I I think we can all look at this and say, you know, we’ve all had year long plans.

Sometimes we have done a lot of times we don’t, or you don’t take action on that until the last minute, or you start and stop. And you know, for me, I totally agree with the statement, I forget, again, where I read it. But just talking about a year being a really hard time to plan, you can certainly set some goals. But your actionable goals can’t be that long.

You know, you can’t say I’m going to double sales in a year, that is going to be so hard for you to actually plan out and get to, whereas if you say I’m going to, you know, do, I did 30 sales calls, I’m going to do 50 in the next 90 days, and I’m looking for this sort of a conversion and then here’s the three things that I’m going to do every day to make sure I hit those.

And 90 days is long enough where you can set some really good goals that show you good growth, you know, whatever they are, again, whether it’s some sort of sales, whether it’s like weight loss, you know, again, anything, but it’s not long enough that you just totally lose track and it helps to run Remind yourself, of course about these goals and what you’ve done. But 90 days, again, is not so long that you can lose focus super easily.

Not going to say I’ve never done that. But again, it’s that just that sweet spot where a lot of people feel that they can set goals that they’re really proud of that they feel like they’re stretching to reach. But then they don’t get, you know, either lose motivation or get get off focused. But the other part of that is actually coming into this and instead of just saying, okay, 90 days is up, let’s set some new goals.

Right, what we want to do is actually have some sort of a process that we can use to then look at our goals and to help ourselves with these longer time periods. So again, at the beginning, I mentioned talking about a daily review, and this is really good. And once you get that habit down you should look at maybe backing it out to longer and longer timescale.

So maybe the week, the month and the first real big one in my mind has been 90 Day and we’re doing a 90 day review. Hey, how did that last 90 days go? Did I hit those goals? Yes or no? You know, just being honest with yourself, what did I accomplish in these 90 days, what went really well for me, and I’m going to go into detail on some more of this.

But doing this on a 90 day scale, so that you can still keep in your mind, you know what has happened. So you’re not looking back at an entire year and trying to do this, so that when you do sit down and do a year review, you’ve already got you know, those previous three quarters and then you fill in the last one, and then you can go back and review it.

And that’s kind of how you can help yourself then do a daily review, or sorry, a yearly review, which would otherwise be really difficult. Most of us can’t remember the details of things that longer we’d certainly forget certain area. So what I want to do now is actually share the screen with you and just show you the simple document that I have.

I believe I started this and just in my calendar, and I’ve recently moved into the notion literally today because I’m going to be doing my plan. Tomorrow, so nothing fancy, but let’s just walk through it here. Okay, so here is notions just a simple page right now I thought about taking my Google Docs and making them potentially into tables.

But I was like, you know, that’s going to be overkill right now I just want to make it something I can use. And I can link to this notion page from my calendar. So that I get that reminder to do my planning every 90 days, and then I just come in here. So I’ve just got it laid out real simple. Hey, Adam, review your journal.

I use the best self journal, you can use whatever you want, of course, but I just do a quick skim through just to start reminding myself Hey, what what did I tell myself went well, each day do I see recurring themes? What didn’t go well, and you know, was there projects or things that I noticed just you know, a quick glance, I just kind of flipped through the pages, do a quick scan.

And just to get it in my head what I’ve been doing the last 90 days a reminder, and just kind of see those patterns. And then I add to the issues and wins list. I’m not going to spend time opening this stuff up. It’s real simple. It’s just a table with the left side is what our wins. And then on the right side is issues. And just adding to that based off of my journal and things that I’ve added that come to mind.

So over the past 90 days, an example would be, you know, I set up a new schedule for going to the gym. And I kept to that I set myself a goal of 80% or better of the days making it that I had arranged to do it, I made that That’s great. That’s worked out really well for me, maybe and then an issue would be the days that I missed it was when I was traveling.

And even though I have a travel plan, I ended up only following that like half the time. So I need to come up with a better way to remind myself to do that when traveling. Just stuff like that where you’re off the top of your head and by review of your journal or whatever it is you use, can be great.

It could be obviously project related, could be personal, could be business, it’s everything. Just pop it in there and then answer these questions in the quarterly review. Okay, I’ve just got a copy and paste it in there. Each quarter. A little line and get them not going to open up the dock and go into detail. But what went well, right? What What happened?

What went well for me? What didn’t go well? And you know, why did this happen? both good and bad answering those questions taking, you know, just a minute or two really to reflect on this. If anything comes to mind, was it external? Did I allow myself to get sidetracked to lose motivation? And then that excellent, why didn’t I achieve my goal? Right?

That could be partially the same thing. But maybe there’s some other reasons. And then what can I do to prevent the bad things from happening again? You know, am I getting in my own way? Do I just need to get out of the way? And maybe I’m the person or the thing that’s causing the bad issues? Do I need to delegate it?

Do I just need to get off my plate? Whatever it is, just being honest with yourself and recognizing that, let’s see of all the things that went well, what did I learn from them, right? If things went well, that’s great. If but also, what can you take away from that? Why Did it go well, how could you get things to go even better next time? All right, and then these last Really good.

I believe I first want to say I heard this on an Asian efficiency podcast was really good. But what should I stop doing? All right? Is there anything that’s impeding me that I should just stop doing? And I recognize that what should I keep doing on a regular basis? Because again, it’s how can I continue to be more successful law?

What should I keep doing that doing that? And then what should I start doing? Is there anything that I’ve learned that maybe somebody else has talked about the IC is getting them great results and I want to get those same results? Maybe I should start doing that. And then just in general, what can I do to make the next quarter better for me that’s kind of a summary. Right?

Just taking all of those things and kind of summarizing that and saying hey, out of all this stuff I just wrote down and shared with myself about the last quarter what is it that you know I can do to make this next 90 days great before I go and set my goals? Okay, you can add any extra notes of course and then brainstorm your major goals for the next quarter.

Alright, this is for myself going into the best self journal or will once I have them so you know, Review your issues list and your quarterly notes. What is it that you need to fix or things you want to work on things, you want to conquer goals, whatever it is big projects, and then focus down to three or less, I suggest using a copy of the focus finder and I’ll include a link to that that’s publicly available.

The details for using it if you want to go grab the o I just need to get off my plate? Whatever it is, just being honest with yourself and recognizing that, let’s see of all the things that went well, what did I learn from them, right? If things went well, that’s great. If but also, what can you take away from that? Why Did it go well, how could you get things to go even better next time?

All right, and then these last Really good. I believe I first want to say I heard this on an Asian efficiency podcast was really good. But what should I stop doing? All right? Is there anything that’s impeding me that I should just stop doing? And I recognize that what should I keep doing on a regular basis? Because again, it’s how can I continue to be more successful law?

What should I keep doing that doing that? And then what should I start doing? Is there anything that I’ve learned that maybe somebody else has talked about the IC is getting them great results and I want to get those same results? Maybe I should start doing that. And then just in general, what can I do to make the next quarter better for me that’s kind of a summary. Right?

Just taking all of those things and kind of summarizing that and saying hey, out of all this stuff I just wrote down and shared with myself about the last quarter what is it that you know I can do to make this next 90 days great before I go and set my goals? Okay, you can add any extra notes of course and then brainstorm your major goals for the next quarter.

Alright, this is for myself going into the best self journal or will once I have them so you know, Review your issues list and your quarterly notes. What is it that you need to fix or things you want to work on things, you want to conquer goals, whatever it is big projects, and then focus down to three or less, I suggest using a copy of the focus finder and I’ll include a link to that that’s publicly available.

The details for using it if you want to go grab the foundation, or the 14 day productivity challenge that’ll walk through that. But this thing is super handy. And it’s just a way for you to kind of self evaluate and get that stuff out of your head and list all the things that you’re thinking like I should be working on this and doing that doing this.

And inevitably, when we come up with like, Okay, next 90 days, I’m going to do these 10 things. It’s like nope, cut it down. Give yourself a little scoring sheet, which is what this is, How excited are you about it? What’s the short term ROI? What’s the long term ROI calculated out and then it just helps to see those numbers and say, Oh, those are the things that I actually think I should be doing.

And so you can narrow it down for there and say, okay, clearly, there’s two or three things here that I’m really interested in, maybe you come up with five, and you kind of do it again, and narrow it down. All right. And then I’ve got this down below there. Let me switch back over here, I’ve got focus down to one, right?

If at all possible, though, the fewer things you focus on, the less you split your attention, the more you are going to accomplish. And then I just write down my goal, what it actually is it and then the best self journal, they have this broken down really well. Now milestones and actions, right?

Because we have goals, and that’s great to say, I’m going to do whatever $50,000 and new sales, but just to say that is, you know, it’s just okay, it’s a number. How are you going to do that? So there’s milestones, maybe you have three things that have to happen in order to get you there. And then for each of those, what are the actions that you can break that down.

That’s then going to become the things that you do maybe on a daily basis, weekly basis, whatever it is to get you there. So I found this to be really helpful. This is a great way and you can certainly Take these for yourself. I’ve got you know, it’s good cooperation of things that I’ve either come up with, on my own. I’ve heard from other people.

I read an article and just taking this and starting to answer that and then reflecting over this over time, and like I mentioned incorporating this, then into the yearly review has been really helpful one, I’m able to now go back and look at my Quarterly Review instead of having to be like, Okay, what was I doing nine months ago? What went wrong?

Like that would never work. So having this has been really, really handy. All right, let me take a quick look here and then. Alright, cool. I think that’s going to wrap it up. I want to really focus on this today. So that is going to be about it. If you have any questions about doing the 90 day review, please let me know leave a comment. There’s also a great book on how to do this.

In terms of your business, it goes into a lot more detail but it’s called traction by Gina Whitman. A lot of people have heard of it. You can use it as a solo printer, you can use it as a consultant, you can use it as a small business, medium business, big business. But they he talks about a lot more than this.

But he’s got a really effective way to do this with you, again, as a solo printer or as owner of a company, or I guess a controlling partner in a company and to bring everybody on board and have this structure that works well, and really helps move you forward more successfully. So hopefully, that’s helpful. Again, leave any comments, you got any questions and I’ll get back to you.

It’s going to do it for this week for Episode 101. If you’re checking out the replay on YouTube, you can hit subscribe down below or you can check it out live by following the link down below as well as the Facebook group. You can ask questions there during or before at any time, be around other people were really focused on productivity, time management, automation, all that sort of good stuff. So that’s it. Have a great week.

About the author

Adam Moody

I'm Adam Moody with the Productivity Academy. Get your productivity, time management, automation, and organization questions answered here. Be sure to check out the Productivity Academy YouTube Channel.
 

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