At the beginning of 2018 I wrote about my focus for the year. I’ve posted a few updates throughout the year (quarter year, half year & three quarters) and now is the time to do a final review. 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle Self Grade: 7/10 In terms of relevance with theme, this year provided plenty of opportunity. I ended up making two major job decisions and we made one where-to-live decision. Each of those provided an opportunity to evaluate our options based on first principles, what we wanted to achieve. I think we did a good job drilling back into the heart of the matter and figuring out what we wanted and why we did. The difficulty is even knowing those things, the decisions aren’t easy as everything is a trade off. 2018 Challenge: Profile 12 Families (w/ Kids) Living Intentionally Different Self Grade: 1/10 I failed to make any significant
This year I picked John Muir as my exemplar. I recently came up with a new review template to help me get the most out of the process of having an exemplar. Below is my entry for this John Muir. What did John Muir achieve? John Muir helped lead the efforts to preserve millions of acres of wilderness land in the United States so that future generations could enjoy them. His is the founder of the Sierra Club, a well published author, responsible for upending the geological theory of how the Yosemite valley formed and is credited as the spiritual father of both the US National Park service and modern conservation efforts. He also managed a very successful orchard and had a great beard. Why did he care about that? Some people pursue goals intentionally or rationally. Others seem to just follow their inner voice – perhaps in a more emotional
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals. I detailed my 2018 focus here (read that first if you want more context). Here is how I’m progressing. 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle Another quarter of big decisions. After deciding where we wanted to live long-term earlier this year, I spent Q3 searching for my next job and evaluating a lot of very different options. In the end, a very tough decision came down to a number of first principles about what was most important to me. I will detail that decision more sometime soon. 2018 Challenge: Profile 12 Families (w/ Kids) Living Intentionally Different I kicked off my first two interviews
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals. I detailed my 2018 focus here (read that first if you want more context). Here is how I’m progressing. 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle Similar to my update from last quarter – I feel like this theme remains very relevant to our effort for the year, even if I haven’t made much progress on the specific named items below. Having decided on where to live, and now evaluating how we want our family to earn an income, has brought us back again and again to first principles. 2018 Challenge: Profile 12 Families (w/ Kids) Living Intentionally Different No progress. I feel bad
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals. I detailed my 2018 focus here (read that first if you want more context). Here is how I’m progressing. 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle This theme fits nicely with the goal I had set for the second half of my sabbath year (Jan-July) – evaluating the options for our life. This was by design. As such we have put a lot of energy into the theme outside of the specific named challenge, habit and exemplar. This means that I’ve done less with those than I would have wanted, but still stayed on theme. To touch on three items from the theme. Earlier
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals. More details about the process are in this blog post and you can review the results from past years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017). 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle The idea of first principles thinking is to remove preexisting assumptions and to build towards a conclusion from the ground up, challenging and testing every brick as you build. A first principles lifestyle would be one in which all aspects of that life are chosen intentionally because they are the most effective ways to achieve a person’s goals. A life in which everything has been stripped back to the foundation and rebuilt intentionally.