How to Do an Annual Review That Genuinely Helps You | Tiago Forte

0:00Jonathan Fields: So, somewhere in November or December, a lot of us open up a blank page or maybe a blank document. We list all the goals we have for the year, along with all the things that we could have done better. And we call that an annual review. And annual reviews, they're great, but the way that most people do them is not. My guest today has run an annual review every year since 2008. The first one was actually inspired by a horrifying moment at gunpoint in a favela in Rio when he was only 23 years old. And he's developed a very different approach. One that's not just interesting, but genuinely different and useful.

0:37Jonathan Fields: Our guide is Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Building a Second Brain and founder of Forte Labs, Tiago Forte, whose new book is Life in Perspective, The Art and Power of the Annual Life Review. In this conversation, you'll discover why the way most of us were taught to evaluate a year, it often ends up poisoning the whole exercise and becoming kind of useless, maybe even destructive. We'll talk about the three-part structure Tiago uses to keep looking back and looking forward from bleeding into each other and getting less clear than more clear. We explore the physical test that he runs in his own body before he commits to anything big, and what he says to the person carrying something from this year that they would rather not open when reflecting.

1:20Jonathan Fields: So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

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3:13Jonathan Fields: If I were building a product business right now, this is the piece I'd want handled. ShipStation helps you get back to what you started for. Peak season doesn't weigh, and neither should you. Get ahead of it today with ShipStation and get 60 days free at ShipStation.com with the code GOODLIFE. That's ShipStation.com, code GOODLIFE. Taxes and fees apply. The topic that we're diving into today is something that's been a deep fascination of mine, curiosity. So I've loved learning your lens on this. Most people do some kind of annual review, whatever they might call And if they do it at all, they do it when they're kind of kicking back at the end of the year, wondering where the days went, the months went, maybe they blinked and they felt like the whole year went by and they maybe want to take a little bit of stock and think about the year to come.

4:04Jonathan Fields: Your annual review process was inspired literally not by that, but at gunpoint some 20 years ago. Take me there. Yes, I was 23. so therefore believing I was invincible. And along those lines, I went to study abroad in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for a semester. And I thought, I'm not going to live in the student housing or in the normal places. Let me go live in the favela, which is the Brazilian term for slum. Part of the reason was to save money. Part was to volunteer and teach English at a school there. and uh i was just i spent six months there i did all that studied i volunteered and then i think it was like the very last day that i was leaving the favela i decided let me just film let me just film a little bit of my street my house my neighborhood and that was where it all kind of started going wrong because i actually knew this i knew that the so the favelas in rio every favela is controlled by a different drug trafficking group.

5:14They're kind of like gangs or cartels. And the headquarters, the home of the leader of the drug trafficking group in my favela lived on my street. And I was so just naive or innocent or just mildly thoughtless that I'm filming the street where this guy lives and his guards who are holding these big military machine guns, They just look at me and they just go, what are you? They just can't believe it. They, this one particular guy, his name is Chucky. He looks like he's a commando. He's like all decked out and, you know, fatigues with this machine gun and this ammunition belt across his chest, like something out of a movie, uh, confronts me angrily and accuses me of being a police informant, undercover journalist, all sorts of things.

6:05and he takes me he takes me at gunpoint to the traffickers headquarters where they questioned me and after showing them the footage on my little camcorder they released me but i i definitely had that moment that they talk about of your life flashing before your eyes that's not a metaphor except with one key difference it wasn't my past life that was flashing before my eyes it was my future life yes all the things that i would never get to have an experience and be.

6:37Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I mean, what a moment. How does that then lead to you saying, I need to in some way, shape or form, get more serious about understanding where I've been, and also getting clear about where I want to go? It started small. It started small. You know, I, I am not a natural at self-reflection. It doesn't come naturally to me. It's not something I, it's kind of like exercise. I enjoy it once I'm doing it, but I don't exactly look forward to it. I kind of resist it. I'm like, oh, do I have to? It's like, oh, and, and that first year I just spent like 15 minutes or 30 minutes or something, just writing down three goals on a piece of paper.

7:26That was how it started. It was so brief. But then that produced results. I found, oh, this thing of writing down your goals that all the research says is effective, you know, it does work. And year after year, I just started adding, just adding one more practice, add a little meditation, add a little journaling, just always the best practices that you hear about, You know, they really do work and they especially work together. Right. There's no silver bullet. But if you bring together and assemble all these practices in a concentrated period, I mean, it is really transformative is what I found.

8:05Yeah.

8:06Jonathan Fields: I mean, it's interesting to hear you say that. And I love the idea that you had this one traumatic experience two decades ago that kind of makes you realize in a blink of an eye, I could have not had the entire future of my life. And now when I step into the future, you realize, oh, I actually do have it. Let me get more intentional. You're 23 years old at that time. So I wouldn't expect you to do a whole lot, to spend like hours or days going deep into a process. But it sounds like a switch was flipped for you that said, I need to think a little bit more intentionally about this moving forward.

8:41Jonathan Fields: And then over the years, just added to and built and built and built until you have this process. I don't think you know this. We've known each other for quite a while now. But this project, Good Life Project, which has been around for 14 years right now, it actually would not exist but for the fact that at the end of 2011, I actually did my own annual review. and I was kind of making it up. I was, you know, like texting a close friend of mine who had done it and then shared it, you know, back in the blogging days when that was the thing to do and he would share this giant post with thousands of words and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool.

9:19Jonathan Fields: And I did it originally because like, I bet this would make for good content to share for other people. I didn't really intend it to affect me all that much. I just thought it would be really good and I started doing it. And then I couldn't stop because I just found it so powerful and so helpful to me and so revealing. And close to a month later, I end up with this 40-page designed annual report that I referenced for years later as sort of a compass for me. But at the very end of it, the last page, I created just a graphic that said, like, my 10 commandments for epic business or something silly like that.

10:01Jonathan Fields: posted them. That graphic kind of went viral all over the place. And at the end of it, I teased, I said, Hey, next year, I'm going to be launching this thing called Good Life Project. So keep your eyes like peeled. I had no idea what this was or wasn't going to be. I just loved the name. And that turned into this now project, which has changed my life and touched millions in various different ways. Almost entirely started because, you know, some almost 15 years ago now at the end of the year, I was like, let me just take a moment to take stock. It's remarkable what this can set in motion. I love that.

10:38I had no idea. I had no idea. And this is so cool. This is so serendipitous. Because you're a participant. You have experience with this thing that I'm talking about, an annual review.

10:51Jonathan Fields: Yeah, it's pretty wild. So somebody's joining us and they're kind I like, okay, so what are we actually talking about? Like, what is this thing called an annual review? And why might I even think about doing this? What's the value of it? So walk me through those two different things. Yes. Yes. So first, what is it? It's really an annual space, a space and a time. Those are the fundamental, the first ingredients that you set aside, that you preserve, that you protect, to look across the entire landscape of your life. Like really, when I say look, I don't mean just like look. I mean like look. Peel the layers back, yeah.

11:35Yes, look at it, see it, dive into it, unpack it, deconstruct it. See in the deepest sense of the term. I'd say that's the basic definition. You can take actions out of it. You can come up with goals or new projects, but I think it's important that it begins with seeing, understanding, and feeling. Not because the constant tendency of achiever types like us is to go straight to the finish line, straight into implementation. Why do it then?

12:03Jonathan Fields: You know, especially because somebody's going to be like, okay, like it sounds, you know, it could be valuable. But if you're not doing it because you're trying to, quote, set up something that's coming next, What's the value of it independent of that? It puts in place the foundation, the building blocks for, yes, for that future that you're trying to set up or you're envisioning, but also so many other things in the future that you can't even imagine. So what is that foundation? It's gratitude. If you're not grateful, if you don't appreciate what's happened in your past, you're not going to be in the right mindset to design that future.

12:46it's awareness and self-awareness self-understanding why do you do what you do why do you believe what you believe what do you believe in the first place um but also really appreciating and savoring the things that have already happened that's the basis of everything you're seeking in the first place what what is every goal ultimately aiming towards fulfillment satisfaction meaning um happiness so what if what if those things were not far off in the future at the end of this long arduous journey what if they were like hiding in your past and your present and just waiting to be kind of unearthed and and examined

13:32Jonathan Fields: yeah i i love the idea of it serving the role of appreciation or savoring um and this is in fact one of sort of like three guideposts that you offer and thinking about how you might sort of like the macro structure of doing this. Especially because, you know, we're, so many of us have heard this phrase, negativity bias. You know, we are so primed to look at everything that we didn't do, to look at everything that went wrong, to look at all the things that still aren't accomplished. Like we just go there so easily and we test ourselves about it. You know, like we're just like, here's the year of things that I told myself mattered and I did not do or accomplish or feel.

14:11Jonathan Fields: We don't have any trouble going there. We kind of go there with way too much ease because we're wired that way, right? And what you're inviting us to do is say, even if this doesn't lead to something grand and new, there's value in the process of looking back and saying, but what went right? And I feel like that really does just change the way that we think about the time that we've spent. Does that land? Yeah, sometimes the and I teach a course where I teach this and coach people. So I always have these, these, these anecdotes, these stories of people in mind. But sometimes what comes out of it is that you realize all your goals are wrong, that they're, they're coming from a place of insufficiency, or trying to prove that you're good enough, or to please your parents.

14:58So in that case, the best outcome is to get rid of those goals, or to change your goals. So you can't exactly, this is something, it's a little hard to explain, but I can't exactly promise what you're going to get out of the annual review. Sometimes, often, it's the opposite of what you think you want or the opposite of what you think you need because there is an inner self, whether you call it a soul or spirit or subconscious, that has its own truth, that knows things that your prefrontal cortex may not know. So in a sense, you are handing over the reins just for this one practice, not the whole rest of the year, you're in charge.

15:40But for this one time, you're saying, let me let my life speak to me. Let that inner voice just run the show for this time. And you're often very surprised what you hear.

15:51Jonathan Fields: It reminds me of something that a question that I have returned to so many times in my life that was posed to me by a guy named Matthew Krosman, who teaches a course at Yale called The Life Worth Living, which he says is the most frustrating course for any student because it's all questions and no answers. But the question that he posed, which I think really lands with what you're saying here is he said, so many of us ask, what do we want? He said, but the question beneath the question is what's worth wanting. And I revisit that so often because so many times I get it wrong. I think so many of us do.

16:24Jonathan Fields: And then we get it and we're like, but I don't feel the way I thought it would make me feel because it wasn't actually worth wanting or devoting energy to. And it feels like you're talking about this process helps you tease that out. It helps you process and understand when that happens and how to navigate things differently moving forward maybe. And the answer changes also. Yeah. This is why the annual part is so important. There's no one-time practice that you then solve the future. I'm amazed how every year the thing that was meaningful and worth wanting last year is not this year. and next year it's going to be altogether sometimes altogether different um we go through seasons and sometimes a season is a year six months three months so agree with you before jumping on here i actually found that annual report that i had written 15 years ago because i wanted to kind of see where was i at and it's almost like somebody else wrote it you know because it's just things are so different i want such different things and I see so much of what I put in there, even though I achieved a lot of it, really wasn't worth wanting.

17:34Jonathan Fields: It didn't give me what I thought it would give me. So, so agree with that take. You offer up kind of just a really interesting, simple meta frame for how to think about completing this. And we've kind of already dropped into it because part one is appreciate the past. This is the appreciation, look back. Walk me through the two other pieces of this. Yes. So the other two are reflect on the present. And the third one is create the future. And they'll spell out arc, A-R-C. And in a way, so those three correspond to the three dimensions of time, right? The past, present, and future. But the reason I divide it that way, I found is they almost require completely different mindsets.

18:18It's good to segment them. And even seek, I talk about this, seek different environments, use different tools, move your body in different ways. you can almost think of them as for the past it's a gratitude practice for the present it's a presence practice because often thinking about the far past and far future can be a way to dissociate and avoid the present right and of course i've never done no no no never never and then the future is a creativity it's primarily a creativity practice and it's the the union of those three, the way they inform each other and they complement each other that creates something more than the sum of its parts.

19:01Jonathan Fields: So let's go a little bit deeper on these. Like, so reflect on the present part of it, right? Give me a little bit more guidance on what I might focus on and maybe also what I might not focus on when I'm in this moment. So what not to focus on? Let's start there. I find, you know, before I even decided to go ahead and write this book, I read all the existing books. There's so many, you know, part of me was like, am I really going to do another, you know, design your life once a year book? Like, is that really my, my highest contribution? And what I noticed in almost all of them pretty much was there's a central part of what they recommend, which is something along the lines of a gap analysis, right?

19:44Divide your life into these chunks, analyze them always pretty much always from a pretty intellectual kind of mental perspective, rate them maybe on a scale of one to 10, you know, rank, rank them, go to the bottom. It's all very, it's like a business process, right? And I've done those and there can be value in that. But in my coaching of people, in my teaching, I find that there's a kind of information that only the present has. There's certain kinds of information that only the past has and only the future has. In the present, it's mostly emotions. It's emotions, it's sensations, it's instinct, intuition, all these only exist in the present, really.

20:29And so that's what I have people focus on. There's two exercises. One is dissatisfaction journaling. So really get into the roots of your dissatisfaction, complain, moan, feel that the wrongness, the not enoughness of whatever part of your life comes to mind. And then the other one is an excitement map. So then go to the opposite end of the spectrum and try to tap into using kind of drawing and visual media. What is most alive for you? What is most alive in you right now?

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24:25Jonathan Fields: That's sequencing.com promo code goodlife. That's S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-I-N-G.com promo code goodlife. Yeah, I love the fact that you offer tools because I think this is one of those things where so many of us are actually sort of so disconnected, so perpetually disconnected from the present moment, from our present experience. Like if you ask somebody, what are you feeling? Half the time, I think we say, I'm not entirely sure. Like, what are you thinking? Well, which of the 10 ,000 thoughts do you want right now? So to have just simple processes and tools to actually say, let me pause. Let me actually, and the sort of like the dissatisfaction thing.

25:05Jonathan Fields: I think a lot of us can go there pretty quickly. Like, what don't I like about my present? But again, giving the tools also to counter that and say like, what's good and what's right in the here and now, even as I said here. Yeah. You know, give me an example. Like if you were literally sitting here right this second, give me sort of like a snapshot version of this. I have this sort of guideline, this technique, I guess, called the three signs of yes. And it's really to look at the specific, like really specific, tangible, physical sensations that arise in your body as you consider your various goals and projects and commitments.

25:44It's a really interesting exercise. I mean, I can do it right now. It takes some getting used to and some practice, but if I just think about something I'm considering doing, say, for next year, and I'm already starting to sort of think about my year-end review in a few months. But one thing we're doing is seeking to publish a scientific paper on our work. It's something that we're preparing for. So when I think about that, I notice heat on my face. I could also be the sun through the window. So I always like to look for three of them. It's interesting, too, that as the idea changes, I reconsider its form, its shape.

26:30Different sensations come up. Like the prospect of working with a real scientist, a real researcher, and imagining sitting down or getting on Zoom and talking to them. Gives me this like rising feeling like in the middle of my back. And then third, let's see if there's a third. There's not a third. So what I would take from that is the idea is still not quite there. It's not quite there. We can look at its shape, how it's going to play out, the form that it takes. But I think what I've taken from that practice is making it a filter for what I commit to. and over time as as i only commit to things that provoke at least three physical sensations in my body and sometimes those are fear it's not necessarily positive yeah like sometimes it can be a fear like right at the bottom of my stomach but that could also be a reason that that means it's the at the edge of my comfort zone that means there involves growth so that could also

27:31Jonathan Fields: be a reason to take it on yeah so the idea then is to sort of pick something and if we're in the present frame right like pick something that's going on in your life now um and rather than trying to think your way like how do i feel about this you're dropping into your body more you're looking for sensations and letting the your physiology give you information about how you really feel about this this experience or this thing that's in your life is that right yes yes which is so hard for so many to do because again we just want to jump up above the neck and be like give me the rational process like give me the to-do list whether like this thing that i'm doing i've just committed to a project i'm working on a book i'm doing this thing like let me let me make the spreadsheet and figure out you know like how do i feel about this is it a good thing a bad thing does it go but does it stay i love the invitation to say well yes and Like maybe there's value in that.

28:35Jonathan Fields: But there is so much data in your own physiology that we totally ignore. I think it's the, for this kind of person, the achiever, the intellectual, the hard worker, the person who identifies with their mind and their intellect. I feel this is the greatest untapped source of information is the information in the body. Yeah, I completely agree with you. So if we're really thinking about the future, and then we want to, I guess part of it, because you call this not an annual review, but an annual life review. And I wonder if also, because you worked with so many people through this process now, I would imagine it's thousands at this point, that we probably have a tendency to just immediately to fall to, let me think about, let me just do the work review.

29:31Jonathan Fields: Like, let me just focus on my professional life and not worry about all the other stuff, because that's really what takes up most of my life and most of my days. Do you see that tendency in people? Absolutely. Universally. What's behind that? Oh, man. Well, part of it is, I think, the legacy of what we usually call an annual review. For most people, they just, when they think in their mind, what experience do I have with this concept? it is the performance review that's that's by far the strongest your work does play a big role right for for a lot of people that is a central part of their identity so i didn't want to throw that away but i find most people the the roots that the source of their problems their issues their dissatisfaction their pain is in their is in their broader life it's in their personal life it's not in their workplace so if we zoom the lens out then and say okay so work life is your work life is a part of this what are the other buckets that we're looking at here so it's funny i i because of my my uh my familiarity with that gap analysis i don't exactly name what are like the canonical these are the 10 categories or 12 but i find that there's the usual suspects.

30:52The three big ones are health, finances, and relationships. Almost 80, 90 % of people are going to, if asked to pick one area, are going to choose one of those three. Yeah.

31:04Jonathan Fields: And that resonates with me. That tends to be how I sort of like sort things as well, in different language, but sort of like similar overarching picture. So we start out with really reflecting or looking back step one look back appreciate the past focus on you know like both the things that went well and the things that could have gone differently um we move into that middle section reflecting on the present bring the things that are currently a part of your life and really explore um and use not just an analytical approach but also an embodied approach which brings us to the part that i would imagine most people just want to jump straight into first like out of the gate which is like creating the future and it would it be right to assume that a lot of folks just want to kind of blow off the first two and get to the that last one me included me included every year i'm like oh i really got to do all these preliminary i don't want the preliminary steps let me just get to the i find that part that by far the most fun and the most enjoyable.

32:13Jonathan Fields: I wonder if the intensity of the desire to skip straight to the future orientation is also in some way a signal of how you really feel about your present. Does that land at all? Absolutely. Yeah, it's two sides to the same coin. So this has been studied quite a bit. People tend to have a time orientation. They're past oriented, they're present oriented or they're future oriented. And what's interesting is a lot of the research kind of concludes that the almost like the best orientation is future. You know, it depends what you mean by best, but there are certainly advantages that that causes you to care about achievement and accomplishment.

33:01It causes you to make sacrifices in the present, delay gratification because your attention, your focus is on that future. It causes you to build, to create, to improve, to plan all these things. So there are definitely some advantages. That's why we keep doing it. Right. But there are also some disadvantages. One of them is kind of what you're alluding to is, I mean, think about the typical New Year's resolution, you know, which most people have not a great association with. It's like, oh, I'm going to lose 20 pounds this year. And then you can set a timer like within hours, days, or maybe weeks, that's over.

33:42That's an example of jumping to future planning and future creation with no preparation, no raw materials. And so I really see the past and the present stages as you're just like, in fact, I ask people to keep a resonance log where every time in the past and present stages, they come across something that just sparks an idea and emotion and insight. They write that down, whatever it is. It can be a word, a phrase, a memory, a scene. And then, so when they start the future, they open up this resonance log and it's like a kid in a candy store. You have in one place, every thought that has sparked something for you.

34:21And then those are your building blocks and you use those to construct to that future.

34:26Jonathan Fields: Tell me a little bit more about the resonance log, you know, because my understanding is this is some, it's not something that you start keeping at the moment that you sit down to do your annual life review. The invitation from you is this is a, this is a notebook, whatever it is that you want to use for it, where it's a go-to on a daily basis. Maybe it's like, it's a capture device for things that happen all day, every day throughout the year. Is that right? Yeah. It, It often turns into that. I find that I have experience of this from my previous books. But if you tell people, you know, keep a notebook, even a digital app version, and you're like, okay, spend the next year capturing idea.

35:05They're just like, it's too big of an art. Too big, yeah. And so it's almost like the annual review, which I recommend people set aside around at least eight hours for, is like a mini experiment. Just spend literally a day, the equivalent of a day, seeing if this works for you. And then if it does, just there's little friction to just continuing that afterwards.

35:28Jonathan Fields: So basically invitation is just created a mechanism, a device. Maybe it's even your notes app, whatever it may be. Right. And just know it's kind of there. Like I'm going to label it. This is my resonance log. Yes. And when you're moving through your day, if you just happen to bump up against something that affects you in a particular way, and I'm guessing it's positive and negative, right? Note what the thing is and then write it down. Or you're really just focusing on the positive here? It can really be anything. But what I'll say is I've often, much of my previous work is on note-taking. And I find that people don't know what to take notes of.

36:06They kind of draw a blank. Journaling is more clear. Usually it's like your diary, like, dear diary, we have models for what that looks like. Or you have a prompt and you respond to a prompt. But with note-taking, it's harder to know. It's a little more ad hoc, a little more open ended. And so I'm sort of trying to give people a concrete thing to take notes about, which is kind of preparing for your annual review. You know, if in the weeks or months or even the whole year leading up to your review, if you write down an idea you have, oh, next year I could do X, a change you want to make, I could change that about my health.

36:47You have a relationship you want to start or end. that's an example where you might feel like it's negative because it's painful but like i often find that these like relatively big life changes we have to they have to cook a little bit you have to chew on them you have to think and feel and consider from different angles and the residence

37:08Jonathan Fields: log is just a dedicated place to do that so it's someplace to just keep returning to it's seed planting. So then part of the process here is when you finally do sit down to do that year-end review, the annual life review, you have something where you can kind of flip back through. Yes. Because we're not going to remember all those moments when we try and sit down and say, what's happened over the last 12 months? So this is a device where you can literally look back and say, oh, right. That happened in February. It really mattered. It lit something up. It triggered something in me it was important and had i not written it down i would have no recollection of it whatsoever because life got busy and i just moved on is that the idea exactly yeah yeah and i i like that word resonance because especially these days an increasingly large share of our notes are taken by ai you know and and i want to make clear that's not what i'm referring i'm not referring to all your zoom meeting summaries, your distilled, you know, YouTube videos that AI has made for you.

38:14That's resonance is a somatic and emotional experience. That's the filter for what goes in your resonance log.

38:21Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that's so important too, right? Because so many of us do default to the note takers and I think they have, they play a role, you know, they help in the right way, in the right mode, in the right context, but in the, in the context of your personal life right i mean this is our preference it's not what the ai deems you know in theory based on analyzing everybody else like should be resonant for you at this moment in your life this is like what actually is resonant for us and nobody but us yeah can notice it and then capture it exactly it's also a tool for self-awareness isn't it just general self-awareness on a day-to-day basis absolutely absolutely yeah it's so related but it's sort of like an annual review is like batch processing that sort of concentrating it but it's very complimentary to also have some sort of you know longer term slower a little bit at a time practice and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors good life project is sponsored by tin can so if you grew up in the 70s or 80s you probably still remember your best friend's phone number and stretching the kitchen phone cord around the corner for privacy.

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41:58Jonathan Fields: If we're thinking about this, you know, that third phase of creating the review process to create the future, big picture, what are the general things that we want to be folding into this? and also what do we not want to be focusing on here and where we potentially go off the rails what people tend to over focus on and therefore i really de-emphasized was the means the means to get somewhere you know they they think they think oh get a promotion they set a new year's resolution or set a goal to get a promotion well what will that give you that'll give me, you know, more recognition status and income.

42:42What will that get you? And you sort of like, you walk down the, well, what then? And you end up at a destination that is often very worthy, very beautiful. You know, I'll have more free time to spend with my family. I'll have the time and space to focus on my health. I'll have the, often it's time or space or freedom or autonomy or self-determination or something like that. So the destination is worthy, very worthy. But people get too fixated on the means. They think, oh, this is the one path for me to get there. These are the exact steps. And it has to unfold this way. That is such a recipe for disappointment.

43:25Jonathan Fields: So that's maybe one thing to be wary of is putting too much emphasis on a very specific means. Like I want to achieve this one very specific thing. It sounds like the invitation underneath that is to ask these multiple levels of like, why does that matter to you? Like, what are you really looking to feel by achieving this thing? Is that right? Yes. Yes. And not just asking it, but the main kind of, in many ways, the culmination of the annual review, at least as I teach it, is this kind of visualization process of putting yourself in that future place. by closing your eyes, imagining the sensory details, where you'll be, who's around, what you're doing, what's the temperature, what's the weather, what's the colors, the smells, to try to feel what that, you know, going down a few levels, try to feel that feeling you're ultimately trying to get to now, instead of putting the feeling at the end of this long, like I said, the long arduous journey, because that, that first of all, it's very inspiring and motivating to actually kind of get a taste of that thing you're working toward.

44:37But I often find that also teaches people things. It teaches people about the nature of that desire that they have, which then causes them to change how they're going to seek it or approach it.

44:50Jonathan Fields: It's interesting. I have known you over the years to be fiercely analytical and process oriented. it, you keep dropping back into sensation and physiology as sort of like the ultimate guiding metrics in this. Is that a shift or is it an emergence? Oh, it's a big shift. It's a big shift that's been unfolding for years. Part of it has been my wife. My wife is kind of the opposite of me. She's the intuitive, embodied, spiritual, you know, muse in my life. And so much of this has been just learning from her. I've just been repeatedly surprised and amazed how her practices, her rituals, I always come into them so skeptical.

45:38And it somehow in ways that I cannot explain, I'm not sure if there's been any research on this, but these rituals provide new perspectives. They help you tap into things. It's really helped me realize that there's a mythopoetic part of me there's a hero's journey there's a mystery in me that is an essential part of me even as analytical as i am and if i ignore that part i am denying some important important truths

46:12Jonathan Fields: about my life yeah that lands really powerfully i feel like the older i get the more I'm just open to the fact that certain things just are without needing to deconstruct why. It's just, I've experienced them enough. There's no rational explanation. I can't in reverse figure out the process or the evidence, but I just accept it to be real. And often those are the things that end up mattering the most to me. You've used the word goals a few times in our conversation. When we get to this stage where we're in the create the future, what's the role of goals here? You know, it's funny. I considered, even in my own review practice, abandoning goals, just thinking, oh, that's outdated.

47:03Let me just get rid of these. But I found it didn't work. Goals have some useful functions. um but what i've sort of settled on is they're kind of like almost the very last step you know once you appreciate the past and reflect on the present and create the future you you visualize what that future is going to be like you put yourself there you back cast which is like you walk back to the present day you write your annual letter you do everything then goals are the final almost just like functional next steps, right? They're not of central importance, the way that they've become in modern productivity culture.

47:44They're a mechanism, they're a means, they're a vehicle, but you often have to change vehicles. You have to switch up the means. So I guess what I'm saying is just to hold them very loosely because they often change.

47:57Jonathan Fields: yeah i love that um i feel like we become so attached to goals and then and very rarely do we actually set goals that work with our lives and then when we fall down and achieving them it's just judgment and shame and self-flagellation and then we start telling ourselves we're not the type of type of person who does xyz or who's worthy of um and it becomes It's an identity level thing and it just shuts us down. I'm so mixed on goals. I think like at times they're really effective and they can be incredibly helpful held the right way, but it's a delicate dance, which kind of brings us to something else that you speak to, which is the mindset that you invite people to bring to this entire process.

48:49Jonathan Fields: Because this can, especially depending on the person and the history you bring to it, this can tip into a process of self-punishment way too easily. Talk to me a little bit about this. Yeah, I would say that's the main pitfall. The main pitfall. It's a legacy of what we're used to with performance reviews, you know, critique, criticize, what's the shortfall, where are you not performing? But I think it's also, it's again, kind of native to the achiever mindsets. most people's achiever mindset, which is you sort of beat yourself into submission, you self criticize as the only way that you know how to improve.

49:32And it just doesn't work long term. It's toxic. It's like poison. It slowly fills your system. It slowly undermines the very things that you think you're, you are seeking. And so I try to sort of have antidotes to that poison throughout the book. One of them is upfront, I think in chapter three, the PACE principles, like the four core principles. All of them, all four are meant to counteract that mindset to emphasize pleasure. That's the P, appreciation is the A, the concrete, just things you can touch and see. And what's the last one, emotions.

50:12Jonathan Fields: Right, yeah, which is a powerful invitation to keep defaulting to those things. You know, like pleasure over probably sacrifice, appreciation over criticism, concrete over abstract emotion, over analysis. Really easy to say, hold these as you're doing this process. Probably a lot harder for a lot of folks to do. Yeah, it's a skill. It's a skill and a muscle that you have to develop that you can develop over time. Like anything else? Somebody's joining us. They're kind of nodding along. They've been maybe playing at the fringes of doing something like this towards the end of every year. Maybe they've even done some version of in the past or maybe never tried before.

51:01Jonathan Fields: But they're kind of like, all right, I can see how this might be helpful to me. Um, but I have this one last piece of resistance, which is, I know there are some big things that happened over this last year that are really bad that I don't want to deal with. Maybe at my own hand, maybe through circumstance, maybe had nothing to do with it, but they landed it in my life and maybe the lives of those I love and hold dear in deep, dark ways. and if you're saying do this thing and don't leave anything off to the side that means i have to bring that in what do you say to that person i would say first what would it look like to feel instead of fix to feel just feel nothing else the disappointment the grief the heartbreak the helplessness the frustration the loss i find that so much of our our goals and our productivity is trying to fix it's trying to change or avoid or suppress that emotion but this is something that i've i've learned it's taken me many years but i have a mentor and a friend named joe hudson who has taught me this that it's the just the feeling of it just the being with it loving it allowing it to express itself that is the answer and the annual review can be a form for that there's been years where i don't get to any of the productive stuff there's no plans that are made there's no ambitions that are built it's just you know i lost my uncle and I somehow managed to go the whole year without feeling that grief.

52:58And that year I just spent the whole day hiking. I live on the side of a mountain. I just walked down my front door and I just hiked and felt that grief, I would say for the first time, like 10 months later. And that was it. That was the review. What I would tell them too is if it, or ask them, if it didn't have to look any particular way, what would it look like for you like if there were truly no requirements no necessary structure it was just a time and a space for you to look at your life for you to feel what there is to feel and that leads people to you know annual reviews that look nothing like annual reviews that are very, very diverse, but that fit what they're going through.

53:49Yeah.

53:50Jonathan Fields: I mean, that really lands. I feel like the invitation you're offering is really to be honest with yourself while also being gentle with yourself. And also, you know, like you just shared, like your annual review that one year is like you brought this person who you lost to mind and went and spent a day in the mountains. While you do offer a lot of process and a lot of advice and like ways to walk through it in a very linear way. Part of your invitation also is like, look, these are tools. This is my process. It's worked for me and a lot of other people, but this is more about the idea of it than you exactly replicating what I've done in the past.

54:30Jonathan Fields: It's an invitation to just create your own version of that. Is that right? Exactly. Yes. Yes. And it's such a balance because people want the recommendations and the tips and the tools. And I really try to give them all the best of what I have to offer. But ultimately, the true sign of mastery and the true sign of ownership is when you take what the teacher has to offer, the parts that you need, the parts that resonate, and you design your own thing. You take it your own direction. Love it. It feels like a great place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of good life project if i offer the phrase to live a good life what comes up what comes to mind is socrates and his quote his famous quote about the well-examined life the well-examined what i what i understand in that is you know if you achieved great things and and did a lot of you know impressive things that's fine but did you really did you really examine your life did you study it did you learn what it had to teach you?

55:37Did you savor it? Did you enjoy it? I think that's a deeper question. And it's at the heart of what a good life is for me. Thank you.

55:47Jonathan Fields: So let's talk about some of the big takeaways from this conversation. One thing I'm thinking about is how just casually Tiago kind of demoted the part that most of us think this is all about. Goals, he said, they come last in his process, not first. Functional steps. Once the looking is done, that's ARC or ARC. Appreciate the past, reflect on the present, create the future. I love the simplicity of this model. The first two are what give the third anything to work with. Then there's the resonance log. Such a cool concept here. One place you return to all year to capture whatever landed on you.

56:24Jonathan Fields: And the resonance, it's somatic. So your AI meeting summaries, they actually don't count. It's got to come from you. And then there's the three signs of yes before he commits to something big. Tiago checks his body for three distinct physical sensations. And when only two show up, the idea just isn't ready. One small thing this week to take away also, maybe on the action level, open up your notes app tonight or wherever you want to take notes. Call a new note your resonance log and put a line in it from the past maybe seven days. something that landed really either good or hard or just whatever you noticed.

57:03Jonathan Fields: Do that a few times before December and you'll walk into your own review with something to work from. And hey, do me a quick favor, share this conversation with just one person that you know who's maybe heading into the year feeling a little bit like it got away from them and they want next year to feel different. And while you're at it, I'd so appreciate it if you take just a few more seconds and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us get discovered and brings more people into the conversation. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.

57:35Jonathan Fields: Editing help by Troy Young and Alejandro Ramirez. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

57:59With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

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