Reflection Prompts

Some reflection prompts I’ve used in the past.

Weekly

30m - 1h, bullet point list of 2-3 things that went well and 3 - 10 things I want to improve for the next week, priority ranked (P0, P1, P2)
Imagine I am the CEO of whatever it is I’m working on – what are the biggest problems?
Look over any weekly goals or daily tracking and think about what to improve (work, sleep, nutrition, exercise).
Imagine myself 30 years from now, and I’ve done all the big things I want to do in life. What advice would that person give me?
Murphyjitsu for the most important things I want to improve for next week.

Do some thinking about if I’m headed in the right direction in life generally.
Am I very excited about what I’m doing and the 5 people I’m spending most of my time with? If it’s not a “hell yes,” it’s a no (see “Biggest learnings” for what I mean).
The 30 years from now prompt.
Read one to a few blogs from role models (either their advice to others or stories about them) – think about what advice they would give you.
How can I make this next month the most productive of my life?
Write out my ideal schedule for the next week (which people that I’m spending time with, how much I’m working on x and y). Then write out what I’m actually doing. How can I cut out the things I don’t want to be doing and add the things I do want to be doing?
What are my most important cruxes for my current life choices vs. other things I could be doing?
How can I do 10x as much as I’ve done previously?
How can I accomplish what I want to in 10 years in 1 year?
Who are the people in the world that seem to have the most important things figured out? How can I spend more time with them?
Hamming circle prompts are pretty good.

Re: “am I very excited” – my general heuristic is that if it’s not a “hell yes” it’s a no (it’s easy for me to get complacent with my current situation and forget what it was like when I was really excited about what I was doing). I believe I have a pretty significant bias towards staying where I am, because I have basically always regretted staying in situations longer than I should have vs. have never regretted leaving something too early yet.
There’s never a good time to give someone bad news (e.g. it’s tempting to put off quitting a job or breaking up with someone, but it’s easy to put that off for months when it’s probably not good to).
It’s very common for me to think my ideas for what to do in life from 1 - 3 years ago are really dumb in hindsight, so I should have humility that my current plan has some key flaws.
Focus is super important, and I feel much more productive when I decide to do one thing all out vs. trying to do two things at once (e.g. a job and learning something else).

December 31, 2020 ·