Reassessment

Nothing is set in stone, at least in what we’ve decided about the world and ourselves. Our plans should never be rigid and systems that we devise should evolve and shed parts that do not work anymore.

It really helps to take a step back and view everything from an overhead perspective. Ask ourselves:

• Which part of our decisions and plans cause friction? Where does it feel slow?
• Where does it feel complicated? When you think about it, do you tune out?
• Which commitments and goals feel irrelevant? Which no longer makes you happy?

Parts of our lives, strategy, systems, goals, and routines that feel relevant to any of these questions should be replaced — not tweaked but substituted with something fundamentally new. Why? Because more of the same thing, even in different forms, has proven that it does not work.

Granted, these do not apply to things that are vital and necessary: you can’t just stop eating, or stop taking baths. That’s preposterous. However, it works for habits, routines and plans that can be switched out like lego like workout routines or that list-taking method that I’ve been tweaking but I just cannot stick to.

The most important thing is to schedule a part of our week into reassessing ourselves. Do it at the end of your routine cycles. For most it will be on the weekends.

For today’s improvement:

Keep a list of things that fit the questions above and make time on my weekend schedule to work on them.

It’s a good way to keep shedding inefficiencies and push through incremental improvements.