Reflection

A Reasonably Detailed Annual Review Guide for Better Health, Wealth, and Wellbeing

January 4, 2023 by Eva Keiffenheim

A no-fluff template for living a more intentional life.

I should not compare myself to others, but I do it anyway.

I browse social feeds and see acquaintances mastering the most challenging yoga pose or raising millions of venture capital. I then enter thought patterns of no being and doing enough.

At the turn of the year, it’s easy to get lost in thoughts about what you don’t have instead of focusing on all the things you do have. But not much good can grow from the feeling of insufficiency.

One tool that helps me overcome feelings of inadequacy and start the new year with a deep sense of trust and power is my annual review.

I have done the review for six years in a row, and it has been life-transforming, specifically through two side effects:

Boosting self-efficacy— you zoom out to take a more nuanced look at your progress, revealing the factors that contributed to your failures and successes, recognising patterns, learning from key insights, and integrating them into your next year.
Increasing intentional living — you develop an understanding of what matters to you; you can see whether what you’re doing with your life is what you actually want to direct your time and energy to.

For example, as a late millennial and first-gen student from a well-resourced country, I grew up in a society that equates hard work with success. I unconsciously learned what’s acceptable (attaching self-worth to productivity) and what’s not (embodying felt emotions). Reflecting on how I relate to work helped me see patterns and unlearn beliefs and habits I perceived as harmful to my well-being and relationships.

This article guides you through the process and questions I use to look at the past, the future, and distinct life areas — from health to work to relationships, wealth, and more.

“My Annual Review forces me to look at my actions over the past 12 months and ask, ‘Are my choices helping me live the life I want to live?’”
— James Clear

Before you start, keep this in mind

I review my review each year and look for ways to improve it. Over the years, different brilliant minds and resources have inspired my thinking, such as Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Sara Blakely, James Clear, Michael Simmons, the free YearCompass, and the book Designing Your Life.

There is no single right way to do it. The best way to complete it depends on how much time you have and what you want to focus on.

Take anything that feels helpful for you and ignore the rest. You might do the entire review or just answer one or two questions.

This is not a test you need to pass — it’s a framework intended to help you wherever you are. So treat it like a buffet, and just take what looks delicious and nurturing for you.

The review is split into three parts — your past, a deep dive into your life’s areas, and your future. The below screenshots are from a template I create (access it free here).

Doing such a review is intense — you’re revisiting your key emotions and lived experiences. It’s normal to feel resistance or tiredness. Take breaks whenever you need them. I like to spread my review over an entire week, completing it a couple of questions at a time. But again — you are the only one to judge how you want to do it. Ready? Let’s start.

1) Reflecting on the past

Starting with open-ended explorative questions allows your most memorable experiences to bubble up. How have you lived your life? What feelings remain? By beginning with an explorative investigation, you allow your

Start with recalling things from your memory. Once you’re done, look at journals, calendars, diaries, and your camera roll, and add anything note-worthy.

Once you feel your answers are more or less complete, you can stop. Then, if you feel like it, share your highlights and lowlights with a friend, or send kind messages to people that were part of your most memorable experiences.

2) Diving deep into your areas of life

In this part, you take a more in-depth look at each area of your life. If you don’t feel the six life areas apply to you, feel free to replace them with whatever seems more adequate for you.

I’m most happy when I put equal focus on all life areas. I can be in perfect health, but I might be unhappy if my relationships are loaded with unresolved conflict and a feeling of disconnection.

Source: Your Annual Review Template (get the full template free here).

When looking at each life area, it is most helpful to consider three prompts. When answering “What went well?” and “What could have gone better?” I focus on the things you had an influence on — something where my choices or behaviour made a difference.

“Next year’s goals, focus and action steps” implies the following sub-questions: What habits, behaviours, or attitudes will you need to develop or adopt next year? What things or habits do you need to stop doing? Have you developed any healthy habits you want to keep? What helped you learn them?

Look at your overall health and well-being in the past year — how were you physically, emotionally, and mentally?

Which activities left you feeling drained, and which activities gave you energy? Has your health improved, deteriorated, or remained constant? How do you feel about your levels of movement, sleep, stress, awareness, pleasure, and time with yourself? Did you move in ways that supported your strength, health, and energy levels?

It can be tempting to lose yourself in storylines — either on how great you are doing or on how much you fucked up. But neither is true. Try to let go of any judgment and take stock of what you did and didn’t do.

Think about the relationships in your life and the people you spend time with — your partner(s), friends, parents, siblings, and more.

Which relationships gave you energy? Which relationships drained your energy? With which people do you feel safe? Who can you be vulnerable with? When have you felt connected to your community? How have you supported the people you love? Which conversations moved you? What new relationships would you like to bring to your life in the next year?

Consider how you spend your time and energy on work. Use your work emails, your work calendar, or meeting notes as evidence to get a better picture of what you worked on this year.

How do you feel about the role work has in your life? What achievements and challenges are you most proud of? What were your favourite projects? What professional relationships impacted your trajectory? How have you supported fellow workers? When did you feel most and least productive?

Most people live from paycheck to paycheck. Don’t feel bad if you have neglected this part of your life so far. Financial literacy is inherited — if your parents aren’t smart about money, chances are high that you don’t know essential investing principles.

Your annual review is a chance to take stock of where you’re at. Are you happy with how much you earned, spent, saved, and invested? How did you develop your net worth (assets (what you own) minus liabilities (what you owe))?

Knowledge isn’t permanent. Most of what we consider truth today decays within a decade from now. Nothing will benefit you more than learning how to learn and becoming a lifelong learner.

When you look at your year, ask yourself what things you have learned, e.g. through online courses, books, podcasts, or formal training. What was the most helpful thing you learned this year? What skills have you developed, and how did you progress? What do you need to continue and accelerate your desired learning path(s)? What new skills do you want to develop?

Your purpose is a deep understanding of the impact you’d like to make on the world. It’s the fuel behind your efforts and where you spend your time and energy. I find this the most challenging part, and I never felt done.

What fills you with excitement and passion? What can you contribute to have a positive impact on the world and our interconnected beings? What makes your life meaningful? How are you useful to humanity?

Write down your best version of your purpose statement(s). Don’t stress about the perfect purpose(s); you can adapt and change them anytime. You can have as many purposes, statements, and goals as you like.

3) Looking into the future

In this last part of your annual review, you look into your next year. You write from your future self, involving all of your senses.

Where do you live? What do you smell, see, hear, or touch? How do you feel when you wake up? Which habits do you follow? What do you work on? Which projects have you committed to? What have you let go of? What people do you spend time with? What hobbies are you pursuing? What are you learning?

Don’t edit yourself while writing the story — it can be as long as you like. You can do it in your journal, on a piece of paper, in the template, or in a text file.

The more vividly you describe your future life, the more emotions will emerge. And your feelings can serve as a helpful primer for your unconsciousness. This narrative is no fixed roadmap; this prompt invites you to dream and think big. Don’t edit yourself while writing it; try to ignore your judgmental voice as much as possible.

Conclusion

Taking the time to do your review, one question at a time, will help you reveal life lessons and critical insights you can integrate into your next year.

Do it a couple of years in a row, and you self-witness the power of consistency over a long period. You can replace all-or-nothing sprints with a more sustainable marathon mentality.

Whether you have 15 minutes or 10 hours doesn’t matter — the most important part is that you do it. Save the template, schedule in a couple of minutes, and give yourself space for one of the most direction-setting activities you can do all year.

Want to get more helpful tools like this?

Subscribe free to my Learn Letter. Each Wednesday, you’ll get proven resources that elevate your love for learning and help you live a happier and healthier life.

Four Principles That Helped Me Go From 0 to 56 Read Books a Year

January 11, 2022 by Eva Keiffenheim

Simple mindset shifts I see not many readers following.

Each January, people pledge it will be the year they will read many books. Each December, the majority wonders why they didn’t.

In 2016, I was among the millions of people who said they’d read many books — but I didn’t read a single one. Yet, in the years that followed, I gradually transformed from a reading-muffle into a book-binger.

How I went from 0 to +50 read books a year. (Source: Screenshot from Goodreads).

Books are the cheapest but most impactful way to gain more skills, meaning, joy, and contentment in your life. For an average of $9, you can receive years of someone’s wisdom, distilled to some hundred pages that can be read in a few hours.

Reading 50 books a year is way easier than you might think. You don’t need to compromise on sleep, relationships, or work. In fact, you can even elevate these aspects by reading more.

Caveat: Reading is often treated as an intellectual status symbol. The more books you read, the smarter you are thought to be. It’s tempting to focus on reading as many books as possible - but it comes at the cost of depth and enjoyment. This article doesn’t encourage you to speed up your reading practice. Instead, it's an inspiration to read more (and yet slow, joyful, and thoroughly).

1) Break Up With Your Perceived Hierarchy of Books

If you’re reading this, you likely grew up with a very narrow definition of knowledge.

The existing paradigm, also prevalent in schools, is left-brain centred. Logic, reasoning, and quantification are more respected than creative expression, imagination, or emotions.

We rate knowledge sources based on this binary scheme. Many people would agree that reading for knowledge is the best reason to open a book.

Of the 102 books Bill Gates recommended over eight years, 90 were non-fiction. And from the 19 books Warren Buffett recommended in 2019, 100% were non-fiction.

But this knowledge hierarchy comes with limits. Social critic Minna Salami wrote: “The idea that calculable reasoning is the only worthy way to explain reality through is one of the most dangerous ideas ever proposed.”

Books don’t exist in hierarchies. Non-fiction isn’t superior to fiction.

Again, Salami: “We need an approach to knowledge that synthesizes the imaginative and rational, the quantifiable and immeasurable, the intellectual and the emotional. Without feeling, knowledge becomes stale.”

Luckily, there are books that can make you feel and know.

When you read Tara Westover’s memoir, you’ll feel how it’s like to grow up in a Mormon family in off-grit Idaho. Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest novel helps you understand what it was like to break free from social expectations in the 1940s.

Through stories, you elevate your levels of empathy for people outside of your cultural community. You learn not only to see the world from the perspective of others but also to share their feelings of pain, fear, and joy.

What to do:

Expand your definition of ‘knowledge’ and break up with the fiction versus non-fiction hierarchy.

Pick the book that sparks your interest, and forget whether this book will make you ‘smarter’ in a traditional sense.

“….a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable — books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.”

― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

2) Read Books You Love Until You Can’t Stop Reading Because You’re In Love With Books You Read

The first book I picked up for my reading goal in 2016 was Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow.’ It was on top of any bestseller list, and my university professors praised it.

Yet, whenever I read a page, I fell asleep. Ultimately, I stopped opening it altogether. Kahneman’s pamphlet became my ultimate reading killer.

I was too proud to stop. I wish I could’ve told my younger self to stop forcing yourself through books you don’t enjoy.

If your goal is to read more, quit the books that slow you down.

You might have to quit several books before you open a book you can’t stop thinking about.

What to do:

Knowing what you want to read is essential, but so is its inversion — knowing what you don’t want to read.

You’re the only person who can judge whether what you’re reading is best for you now. Read the genres you cherish, the content you enjoy, and the authors you admire.

Don’t feel guilty to start with the ‘bad stuff.’ A few hundred books in, you will become a more critical reader and anyway gravitate towards the good stuff.

Better to waste 9$ than 4 hours of your lifetime. Books aren’t created equal — millions aren’t worth your time.

As a rule of thumb, remember the following: If you don’t look forward to continuing reading the book that’s on your shelf, skip it.

“Books are tangible objects of myriad textures — aged, hardback, hand stitched and so on. They are mentally stimulating, therapeutic, and they potentially transform your deepest thought patterns. They affect you entirely.”

— Minna Salami

3) Make your phone your reading-ally

Desired behaviour isn’t solely tied to your willpower. Self-control and self-discipline depend on your environment, as Nobel-prize winner Thaler discovered.

Phones hijack your self-control: The red notification badges, Apple introduced with its Mac OS X years ago; the pull-to-refresh slot machine mechanisms that we refresh in unconscious hope of a quick dopamine shot; the infinite scrolling design, that in Nir Eyal’s words, is “the interaction design’s answer to our penchant for endlessly searching for novelty.”

The average person spends over four hours a day on their device. If you spent half the time reading, with a reading speed of 250 words per minute and an average book length of 90,000 words, you’d finish more than two books a week.

When it comes to grabbing your attention, books can’t compete with phones.

The equation is simple: The less time you spend on your phone, the more you’ll read.

Tristan Harris said: “Once you start understanding that your mind can be scheduled into having little thoughts or little blocks of time that you didn’t choose, wouldn’t we want to use that understanding and protect against the way that that happens?”

What to do:

Disable all notifications. Use airplane mode whenever possible. When you start reading, put your phone in a different room.

Keeping your phone away from your bed is one of the hardest habits to break. But the work is worth it. I replaced my phone with an alarm clock and stopped taking my phone to the bed two years ago. In bed, I can either sleep or read.

This is what will give you plenty of time.

Make reading the obvious choice. Put your book on the pillow when you make your bed in the morning. Thereby, reading in bed becomes your default option. Not having to use willpower will set you up for a regular reading habit.

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

— Naval Ravikant

4) Have an Antilibrary

Do you ever feel guilty about the book staple you haven’t read? You shouldn’t — unread books increase your motivation and capacity to learn.

When you just read a few books in your life, you’re likely aware of what you don’t know. But once you’ve read through some hundred books, you tend to become ignorant.

You might be too confident, too sure, and less aware of the things you don’t know. That’s where antilibraries come into play.

The books you haven’t read (and will never read) assemble your antilibrary.

They represent unknowledge and are the best cure for overconfidence.

“You will never read all those books,” friends say when they look at my want-to-read list. The list grows by 2–3 books every day. They are right. Even if I continue reading 1–2 books a week, I will only get through some of them.

But that’s the point: My antilibrary is a constant reminder of what I don’t know. It helps me stay curious and humble.

Psychologist Adam Grant writes: “No matter how much brainpower you have if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again.”

When you’re convinced you know something, learning something new means you have to change your mind. The best motivator to continue reading your book is a long list of books you want to read after finishing.

What to do:

Don’t ever feel discouraged by the books you haven’t read. Instead, see them as a reminder to be humble and curious.

Whenever somebody recommends a book (and you should ask the people that inspire you the most for their top 3 book recommendations), add it to your reading list (if you haven’t one, check out Google Keep, Wunderlist, ToDoist, or Goodreads and settle on your favourite list).

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In Conclusion

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

No therapy session, university lecture, or coaching session has had a bigger impact on my life than reading books. Books change your life; they change the way you think in unimaginable ways.

While each of the above principles can change how you read in one way or the other, they only serve as inspiration, and you certainly don’t need to implement every single one.

Choose one or two you like, but screw the rest. Only one person should define your reading journey — you.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

This is How I Made My First $30,000 From Writing Online

May 15, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim

7 beginner-friendly tips to get you started.

I published my first article in late March 2020. Since then, I made a full-time income from Medium and writing for clients that found me via the platform.

I had no prior writing experience, and English is not my first language.

Yet, I won’t say anyone can succeed. Writing is like running. You get better with practice, and almost anyone can do it. But how many of the people who fancy running end up running a marathon?

99% who read this will never start or quit too early. But if you’re in for the long-term, the following strategies and tips will help you make a solid income.

1) Is starting on a platform still worth it?

It depends on your answers to the following questions.

Do you have an existing +10K follower base on any social media platform?
Are you good at SEO or plan to learn it?
Do you know how to code or want to build your website on a CMS like WordPress, Ghost, or Wix?
Can you spare $2,000 to hire help in case you fail with SEO or programming?

If you answer yes to all of these questions, write a blog. Read this excellent guide by Natt Eliason, and stop reading this article now.

In all other cases, start on Medium.

Publishing is frictionless. You tap into an existing audience. Through publications, comments, and curation, you receive feedback on your writing. Data on reading time will give you additional insights. Plus, you don’t have to spend time finding sponsorships or affiliates for your website. You get paid based on the user’s reading time on your articles.

Even if Medium didn’t pay me a single cent, I’d write on the platform. I get thoughtful comments and 10–15 e-mail subscribers a day. I see the platform as a tool for learning and growing my business.

What you can do:

Create an account and enroll in the Medium Partnerships Program.

2) How to find endless ideas

When I wrote my first three articles, I feared I’d run out of ideas. But with a system in place, this won’t happen.

The more you create, the more creative you become. Research shows the best ideas will arise once you flow into the writing process.

Once you get the ideas, you want to capture them. Most of my ideas come while I write an article, read a book, or talk to friends. How I capture the ideas evolved over the months from Trello, to Notion, to Milanote.

v1 Idea Management on Trello March 2020 —July 2020 (Screenshot by author)

v2 Idea Management on Notion August 2020 —December 2020 (Screenshot by author)

v3 Idea Management on Milanote Jan 2021 —today (Screenshot by author)

But in the end, it’s less about the tool and more about a system. A lack of structure is a threat to creativity.

Thanks to the process of capturing everything on the go, I never start with an empty page. I know I have more ideas than I will ever be able to cover.

What you can do:

Pick your favorite tool and start collecting ideas today. What are you curious about? Do you have life lessons worth sharing? Any insights based on your studies or your profession? Write your first 10 article ideas and add a line or two. From now on, capture any idea.

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

3) The single metric you should measure

Unless you’ve written before, your first twenty articles will suck and not reach a broad audience. Don’t stress about it. Every good writer goes through self-doubt and the valley of despair.

The most important metric to measure is whether you created quality content. I found the Medium distribution guidelines very helpful for adding value to my writing.

Many first-time writers say they read and follow the guidelines when they don’t (me included).

How to spot it? They write journal-like entries instead of focusing on the reader. Burn the following advice from Medium’s editorial team into your mind:

“Does it add value for the reader? — Does it share new insights or perspectives? Offer an original take on a familiar issue? Does it stir emotions and/or thinking? Provide meaningful advice? Enrich a reader’s understanding of the topic? Does it feel like time well spent?”

Writing is different from journaling. Avoid using “I” too much. Posts are not about you but the reader. Always put the reader’s benefit first by putting yourself in their shoes. How can you derive actionable advice from your article? Where can you add more empathy for your reader?

Value creation is the single most important metric to focus on. Most successful writers I know went from a niche audience to a broader audience by focusing on the group of people they can truly help.

What you can do:

Study the distribution guidelines. Take notes. Read through the work of successful writers, such as Michael Thompson, Megan Holstein, and Niklas Göke.

4) Publish with big publications

Think about it this way: The official Headspace Youtube Channel with 425,000 subscribers would publish your article about meditating. You could reach almost half a million people without having to build this audience.

With Medium publications, you can do exactly that. Better Humans has almost 400,000 followers. If you publish an article with them, you can reach way more people than you would have ever reached by self-publishing.

Many writers feel demotivated by rejections and miss out on the power of publications.

You have to write quality content before big publications accept your work. Don’t feel angry if they don’t want you in the beginning. Your writing isn’t good enough yet.

I applied 9 times for Mind Cafe, 12 times to Better Humans, and 15 times to P.S.: I Love You before publishing with them. Some publications haven’t added me (yet). But I’ll try again and again.

What you can do:

Choose publications within your niche. Search for the top writers in your topic and look where the most successful articles were published.

Once you found your target publications read their submission guidelines and recent posts they published. Then, write quality content, and submit. Don’t feel discouraged by rejections. Be patient. Tapping into the existing audience is worth the wait.

5) Collect your reader’s emails

“You have to start collecting emails today,” Sinem Günel told me in one of our first coaching sessions.

I had just published my first article, and asking my 7 readers to sign up for a non-existing newsletter seemed hilarious.

But Sinem insisted: “Now is the right time to start one. If you’re trying to make money online, your email list is one of your biggest assets.”

A year and 1K+ subscribers later, I know she was right. Platforms change. Emails don’t. Your follower’s email address is their most permanent online identity.

What you can do:

Register on Convertkit, Mailchimp, Substack, or Mailerlite. I chose to go with Convertkit as it’s intuitive, free and helps me grow my audience. But again, the tool doesn’t matter that much. The important part is to get started.

Add a call to action at the bottom of each article. Until recently, my CTA was a fluffy “Do you want to connect? Sign-Up here”.

Don’t worry if you’re unsure about your newsletter’s content. I didn’t send a single email until six months in. But when I knew what I wanted to write about, I started with 400 subscribers.

6) Write headlines that make people click

Simple but sad: If your headline isn’t interesting, nobody will read your article. There’s so much great content that will never be read because the headline sucks. You can write the best blog post, but without a great headline, nobody will read it.

To succeed in online writing, you must learn to write great headlines. Writing headlines is unglamorous. That’s why many writers avoid practicing the craft.

But to make money with writing online, there’s no way around it. The best headlines make the reader curious, describe a transformation, offer a specific benefit, or a thought-provoking statement.

“I’ve written more than 15,000 headlines since I’ve started writing. Only one percent of them are really good. Those one percent of headlines I’ve written created 100 percent of my viral successes. Every single morning, I write down 10 ideas for headlines. […] I promise, if you don’t learn how to write good headlines, you’ll never have a career as a blogger. Never. So do it.”

— Ayodeji Awosika

What you can do:

Browse through your reading list and save the headlines that made you click. Write 10 headlines every morning before you start writing. Most writers never do it. By practicing, you gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

7) Use online tools to improve your writing

These tools won’t turn you into a professional writer; they will level up your writing process. These are the tools I use daily:

Improve your headlines with co-schedule
Format your headlines with Title Case Converter
Look beyond Unsplash pictures with Pexels, StockSnap, Freepik, or Burst
Run a health check with Grammarly or the Hemingway Editor
Look for alternative words with Thesaurus

Are you ready to increase your income?

Making money from online creation is a long-term game. You won’t see the desired results in the beginning. But if you keep working, you might suddenly hit a glass ceiling.

Progress is slow but exponential. Whenever you think about quitting, keep in mind, you’re in for the long term. Writing in 2021 isn’t hard.

Making money through writing works by providing value at scale. Here’s what to remember:

Enroll in the Medium partner program.
Collect every idea with your favorite tool.
Focus on creating value for the reader.
Pitch and publish with the big publications.
Start an email newsletter from day one.
Write ten headlines every day.
Use online tools to improve your texts.

Don’t waste time searching for a secret sauce. Use success stories as inspiration but don’t get lost in them. Creation is all that matters.

When looking at your metrics, don’t feel discouraged. Use data to analyze what works and do more of it. But apart from that, don’t agonize over low stats. Instead, spend all of your energy consistently creating user-centric content.

You’re not too late to the party. Today is the perfect time to start. Follow these steps and make a full-time living as an online writer.

Sign up for the Learn Letter and get weekly inspirations on reading, learning, and growth.

7 Signs You’ve Internalized Capitalism

May 6, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim

Societal structures have shaped the thoughts we tell ourselves about productivity, rest, enjoyment, relationships, and growth.

Do you ever lay down thinking you didn’t achieve enough?

If you worry about being worthless, it’s likely because you’ve adopted a toxic thought pattern — often without realizing it. As Dr. Emilia Roig writes:

“Capitalism is to us like water is to fish. We do not notice that it surrounds us.”

If you’ve internalized capitalism, you‘ll never come to a point where you feel like you’re good enough. Your hard work won’t lead to happiness.

The following list will help you know if you’ve internalized capitalism — and what you can do about it if you want to change.

1) Your self-worth is tied to your productivity.

When was the last time you watched Netflix without feeling guilty?

Society values busyness and productivity. It’s easier to measure your worth by what you do instead of who you are. Your self-worth depends on your performance.

Psychologist Nikita Banks writes: “It is this idea that to be unproductive is sin, and as such, this idea that you must always be producing is in direct relation to your worthiness.”

With the internet full of productivity porn, it’s hard not to judge yourself for being unproductive. But when you equate your self-worth with productivity, you will never experience inner peace.

“The glorification of hustle culture reinforces the belief that being busy and productive is the key to happiness.”

— Lee McKay Doe

2) You feel guilty when you do something enjoyable.

Do you do things purely for fun? I feel guilty whenever I do something without any productivity goal. I have the inherent fear that pleasure will wreck me.

When you’ve internalized capitalism, you always put aside pleasure and focus on making the most out of your time. Daydreaming is for losers. You’re on the eternal quest for the next achievement.

But being busy is not better. With productivity as a default, more productivity isn’t the right way to go. When work is all you do, it ultimately becomes meaningless — overwork for too long, and you’ll ultimately burn out.

Many workaholics I know have eating disorders or addiction issues. They seek energy from external resources like food or drugs to keep running. But short-time highs only throw them further out of balance, and they crave for the next high.

I’m not against hard work. Yet, too much of it comes at a high cost. A balanced life is a happy life. And to live in balance, we need enjoyable tasks as much as we do need work.

“Hard work is important. So are play and non-productivity. My worth is not tied to my productivity but to my existence.”

— Glennon Doyle

3) You prioritize work over health.

Have you pushed yourself to work when your body was recovering from an illness? A capitalist society holds people responsible for their well-being. If you can’t work, it’s your fault.

You feel unproductive when you go to the doctor. You’re mad at fluctuating energy levels and work out to be more productive. You expect to work like a robot. There’s no room for ups and downs.

Only prioritizing health when it prevents you from working is a clear signal for internalized capitalism. You only take care of your health to avoid not being able to function.

I’m unlearning that doing more, faster, and better makes you happier. I try to stop sacrificing my health and striving for ‘high-performance’. But despite I know faster-better-more isn’t the key to a fulfilled life, my inner voice still asks, is it?

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

― Howard Thurman

4) You equate rest with laziness.

I grew up in a hard-working German middle-class family and internalized sentences like:

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
(Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen.)
Work hard, play hard.
(Wer abends lange feiern kann, kann morgens auch schaffen.)
“You can’t make something out of nothing.”
(Von nichts kommt nichts.)

Many people normalized and remember these thoughts as if they were our natural behavior. We even stopped questioning them.

You force yourself to keep productive while your inner world tells your body sends the signals it’s enough. You only deserve a break when you’ve worked so hard that you now deserve it.

You have to earn your downtime. You judge everybody who doesn’t work hard enough. You think it’s your own mistake if you struggle to achieve your tasks.

5) Activities exist in hierarchies.

Reading a historical fiction book vs. taking an online course — which one do you find more valuable?

Capitalism offers opportunities to individuals — but only to those who work hard enough. Dr. Emilia Roig compares capitalism with a race where people compete against each other under the same conditions.

The race is unfair. There are people who, no matter how hard they work, can’t reach the finishing line. “Everyone can do it” is an easy excuse to make by people who had privileged starting conditions.

Internalized capitalism downgrades all activities that don’t make you win the race. What doesn’t contribute to making money or improving yourself is a waste of your time.

You’re trapped in a logic of material productivity and competition. Things and actions that value love, enjoyment, empathy, mindfulness, understanding, and care have less value.

6) You prioritize work over relationships.

Individualistic orientation is at the heart of advanced capitalism. You are responsible for yourself. With an entire society valuing self-sufficiency, most people don’t allow themselves to need people or ask for help.

Researchers confirm what we instinctively feel. Robert Waldinger, psychiatrist and former professor at Harvard Medical School, shared in a TED Talk how relationships are essential for a healthy, happy life.

Yet, many people don’t put their relationships first. They work long hours instead of caring for their friends. Forgetting a text message once or skipping a friend meet-up twice doesn’t matter.

But if you always put work first, it’ll pile up. You’ll lose friends one after another. Working instead of fostering friendship decreases wellbeing.

It’s human connection that adds meaning to our lives, not accomplishments.

“Many relationships and moments of inner peace were sacrificed on the altar of achievement.”

— Ryan Holiday

7) You optimize for personal and monetary growth.

Almost everything we see in life should be optimized. A look on the scales is a hint for working on your weight. The look in the mirror a reminder to improve your skin. The number of daily steps a hint to walk more.

Whatever we see is an invitation to optimize.

As Hartmut Rosa writes, “Mountains are to be climbed, exams to be passed, career steps to be taken, lovers to conquer, places to visit, and taking photos (‘you have to see it’).”

In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes suggested people stop striving for more as soon as their needs are met. Once they reach this point, they prefer to live the good life.

But his theory was wrong. Even though economies reached all-time highs, people don’t work less. In ‘How much is enough?’, Edward and Robert Skidelsky describe how the rich world has so much less leisure than Keynes suggested.

Why? Material desires are limitless. Accumulating capital and optimizing our well-being is a cornerstone of capitalism. You see your growth trajectory, and you want more.

In Conclusion

Societal structures have shaped the thoughts we tell ourselves about productivity, rest, enjoyment, relationships, and growth. This article is not about anti-capitalism or praising any other economic system. Instead, it’s an invitation to question the status quo.

I won’t lie — it’s difficult to unlearn internalized capitalism. Even when you’ve accepted productivity, money, and achievement won’t make you happy, changing your thoughts and behavior is tough. Yet knowing these signals will raise your awareness.

Whenever you spot internalized capitalism, remember that you’re enough — no matter what you do or don’t do. You’ll find yourself living a happier, healthier, and freer life.

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My Life Became Richer the Day I Stopped Chasing Passive Income

May 4, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim

It’s worth questioning the beaten track.

Author at an EU conference about innovation in education. (Source: Heinnovate, 2018).

“You’re never going to get rich renting out your time,” Naval Ravikant says. “Earn with your mind, not your time.”

And it’s true: people can become wealthy by establishing systems that make money independent from time. They build products with no costs for selling additional units such as books, online courses, media, movies, and code.

And so I did. When I became self-employed last summer, I said no to trading my time for money. I declined freelance gigs and job offers from previous clients and focused on building scalable online income streams.

Within a few months, I made 4x the amount of my previous full-time teaching job. Yet, something felt odd. After two months of a $10,000+ income, I felt less happy than before. Passive income didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would. Here’s why my life became richer the day I stopped optimizing for passive income.

Activities exist in hierarchies.

When you focus on building passive income, your time becomes your most valuable resource. Pretending your time is worth $1,000 can make you 100x more productive.

You hire freelancers and focus on the strategic tasks that push your business forward. You evaluate how you can use your time in the best way to multiply your returns without putting in more hours — but it comes at a cost.

Chasing passive income will downgrade all activities that don’t push you towards your goal. You’re trapped in a logic of material productivity, competition, and greed for money. Things and actions that value love, enjoyment, empathy, mindfulness, understanding, and care have less value.

You won’t be able to enjoy a hobby such as reading because you’ll become obsessed with work.

“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Passive income makes you greedy.

In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes predicted that people stop striving for more as soon as their needs are met. Once they reach this point, they prefer to live the good life.

Why? Material desires are limitless.

Once you make a few thousand bucks a month, you don’t retire and live the good life. You see your growth trajectory, and you want more.

Maximum income ≠ maximum impact.

The people most in need are not the ones who drive your sales. By focusing on and optimizing for your target audience, you overlook those who need help but can’t pay for it.

In ‘I spend, therefore I am,’ Philip Roscoe argues that the justifications of economics make you set aside any social or moral obligations. Instead, you act within a limited, short-term definition of self-interest.

This mindset is responsible for the gravest problem we face: the empathy gap.

The ones who belong to the dominant groups — white, heteronormative, without disability, cis-gender — don’t learn to develop empathy for those who do not belong to the norm.

And maximizing income with digital products widens this gap. You lose touch with reality. You’re not challenged to question your worldview. Instead, you remain in a neat online bubble.

When I think back on my best workdays, they don’t include screens or income. The happiest moments always happened with people around me — helping the local community or doing things nobody wanted to do.

Passive income delays doing what you want to do.

When you’ve built passive income streams, you can do whatever you want with your life. But why not do what you want in the first place?

Oh, yes, right. You first need to ‘achieve it’ before you can allow yourself to do what you love.

Optimizing for passive income is like taking a consultancy job. You take it because of the promises that await you after you made it. But taking any job is not about what you’ll get as a result. It’s about who you become on the way.

Chasing after passive income is just another way for delaying the most important question: How do you want to spend your life?

Once I answered this question, my priorities shifted. I work 5–10 hours a week for an education NGO without earning a cent. I traded time for money and accepted a part-time project for fostering entrepreneurship education at schools.

Does that mean I don’t know the value of my time? On the contrary — I know what I want to do with my life: improving education.

You tie your self-worth to your net worth.

With internalized capitalism, it’s easier to measure your worth by what you have instead of who you are. Your self-worth depends on your performance.

The online world celebrates people for making a specific amount of money a month. But when you seek external confirmation, you lose sight of what really matters.

Instead of running in the corporate hamster wheel, chasing promotions, you’re chasing the next number. You built the very hamster wheel you wanted to escape. In the pursuit of passive income, it’s easy to forget what you truly live for.

On days I made $400+, I felt great. On the other days, I didn’t. And in both cases, I looked for ways to accelerate monetary growth. But as Edward Abbey says:

“Growth for the sake of growth is the motto of the cancer cell.”

In Conclusion

Do I want people to stop chasing passive income? No. But we should stop idealizing it. The passive income chase can be destructive. It can make you self-centered, greedy, unhappy, and possessive of time.

Focus on finding a job you genuinely enjoy. And if that means working in a kindergarten — by all means — please do it. You’d be my hero.

True heroes are the ones who are generous with their time. The ones who give back to society without expecting anything in return.

Whether your goal is passive income or not, it’s about you finding your own way. But I bet you won’t lie in your death bed regretting the dollars you didn’t earn. What you might regret is supporting a system that discriminates against minorities.

My life became so much richer the day I stopped chasing passive income. I hope yours will too.

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It’s Hard to Hear Yourself Think When You’re Surrounded by Noise

March 7, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim

How to think for yourself

“Most people are other people,” Oscar Wilde once said. “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

A lot of people believe things without questioning them. That’s how brands and job titles become valuable. A shared belief system makes them desirable.

Did you pick your job because you truly thought for yourself? Or did you choose it because of society’s perception of that job?

We’ll never know. Yet, I’m sure Kant would kill himself if he woke up to all the fluff that says how to live your life. Around 1780 he preached we should trust no authority except our own reason. Here’s how to do it in 2021.

Consume Less Conventional Media

For many people, the default option is to scroll through their newsfeeds and fill their minds with other people’s chatter.

80 percent of smartphone users check their device every morning within the first 15 minutes after waking up. Before they can even think about their day, their brains are flooded with external stimulants.

When you start your day with your phone, you don’t have the slightest chance to think for yourself. You condition your mind for distraction. Notifications and messages will make your thoughts bounce around like a ping-pong ball.

There’s a simple solution most people will never try.

Don’t turn on your phone before lunch. It’s simple, but most people won’t even try it because it’s incredibly hard to deviate from the norm. But if you do, you’ll be rewarded with clarity and your own thoughts.

When you’re less aware of what everybody else is thinking, you can’t follow their thoughts. Step by step, your thoughts will become more independent.

Make Thinking Time Non-Negotiable

Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to fill it. I listen to podcasts, read books, have a conversation with my partner, answer messages, or hop to the next task in my bullet journal.

And while these activities can be enjoyable and add energy to my life, they have a marginal return on thinking utility. After a certain point, every additional minute of doing decreases your ability to think for yourself.

When you’re so busy doing, you don’t spend a single second thinking. Days, weeks, even years go by without ever having a single deep thought. At the end of your life, you realize you’ve lived the life of others.

When was the last time you used your spare time to just think for yourself?

Thinking, ideas, and insight need input. You don’t need to hide away for 9 years as Montaigne did. A few hours each week can suffice.

If you want to think for yourself, schedule time to think. While it might seem like it’s slowing you down, the opposite is true. Block time in your calendar. Turn off your phone, your computer, and your wifi. Take a pen and a piece of paper to your hand. Then, think and write.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln

Learn How to Think Critically

Education systems teach obedience. The most successful students are those who understand what teachers want and follow the rules. It’s hard to become a critical thinker when grades reward conformists.

Luckily, critical thinking is a behavior you can learn. An HBR article writes critical thinking requires three steps:

Question assumptions. Challenge everything you hear with questions such as: How do you know that? You don’t need to say this loud. But whenever you hear something, ask yourself whether it’s true.
Reason through logic. Seek whether arguments are supported by evidence: Do arguments build on each other to produce a sound conclusion?
Seek out the diversity of thought. Engage with people outside of your bubble (see the next point).

Find Other Independent Thinkers

As most people don’t think for themselves, the chances are low that you have a ton of independent thinkers in your network.

A great antidote is meeting different types of people. Don’t stay in your bubble. Go to university libraries from different faculties and start conversations. Go to another part of the city and speak to people you normally don’t talk to. As Matthew Dicks writes:

“I prefer to write at McDonald’s because I like racial and socioeconomic diversity as opposed to cashmere and American Express.”

Most people learn too late in life that seniority or university degrees are no indicator of self-directed thinking. Don’t let social prestige blend you. Instead, connect with independent minds.

If you’re part of different bubbles, you start to think for yourself by combining ideas from one bubble to another.

Borrow the Brains from Dead People

Go beyond demographics, occupations, and locations. Expand your circle of influencers across time. To do so, read from great thinkers who have lived before you. Follow Schopenhauer’s suggestion:

“Only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.”

And once you read books from other centuries, don’t just look at what happened. Try to really get into their heads and ask questions like:

Why do they think that way?
How did the world appear to them?
What made them change their opinion and why?

Conclusion

To live a life filled with meaning and happiness, it’s not enough to do what everybody else is doing. Dare to think for yourself.

Spend less time in front of your newsfeeds.
Block thinking time in your calendar.
Challenge everything.
Connect with independent thinkers.
Read the books from past centuries.

Oh, and by all means, please don’t copy everything I said. Question everything. Don’t trust blindly. Make Kant proud. Sapere Aude! — Have the courage to use your own reason.

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This is Exactly How Reading 197 Books Improved My Life

March 4, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim

Naval Ravikant: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

Do you ever open a book and worry whether reading can really change your life?

If you feel like reading is a time-waster, it’s likely because you haven’t reaped the rewards yet. As Naval Ravikant once said:

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

You don’t see the desired results within weeks. If you stop too early, you’ll never get where you want.

But once you read for years rather than weeks, you see it’s the shortcut to get where you want without trial and error. You simply borrow the brains of the greatest minds and apply their nuggets of wisdom.

Through the 197 books I read, I learned from some of the best thinkers. Here are three specific ways reading has improved my life.

1.) Automating Your Path to Financial Freedom

Financial literacy is inherited. If your parents aren’t smart about money, you don’t learn the essential investing principles unless you read.

Books taught me wealth isn’t about how much you make. It’s about how much you save. Don’t save what is left after spending but spend what is left after saving.

Your paycheck won’t make you rich. Your investments will. Ramit Sethi uses 50–60% for Fixed costs (rent, utilities, debt), 10% for Investments (401(k), Roth IRA, ETF saving plans), 5–10% for saving goals (vacations, gifts, emergency fund) and 20–35% for guilt-free spending money (dining, drinking, movies, clothes).

Reading made me set up my investment plan. Right now, I invest 25% of my income. From my paycheck, 15% go to ETFs, 7% to cryptocurrencies, and 3% in lower-risk assets like bonds. On top of this, I sometimes cherry-pick stocks. But stock-picking is gambling. Here’s why.

Risk and return are interrelated. If you want to invest successfully, you can’t eliminate risk. The money market rewards investors with interest in the risks they take.

Smart investing isn’t about avoiding risks. Instead, it’s about diversifying your risks. But with stock-picking, you’re betting on a single company.

Here’s another insight that altered my path to financial freedom: You’re never going to get rich by renting out your time.

Wealthy people built systems that make money independent from time. They sell products with no marginal cost of replication — things like books, media, movies, and code. You can multiply your returns without working more.

As Nicolas Cole says:

“The way that people build true wealth for themselves is they see money differently than everyone else. They don’t see it as something they ‘have.’ They see it as something they deploy, and use to build and grow from there.”

2.) Cutting Workdays from 11 Hours to Five Hours

I used to work long hours. I worked hard to get what I felt was a success in life, including building my own companies next to a purposeful 9–5 job, my Master’s degree, a handsome fiancé, a specific amount of workouts and books per week, a number on the scale.

I was on an eternal quest for the next achievement. I never paused.

But one book after another, my life changed. Eckhart Tolle made me redefine success. John Strelecky revealed my life priorities. Brené Brown transformed my inner voice. Cal Newport helped me build deep work habits.

My workdays averaged 11 hours. Now, they‘re down to 5. The time spent is less. But my focus is higher. The equation for knowledge work is as follows:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The more hours your work, the harder it is to focus. Working 11 hours a day with zero focus leads to zero high-quality work. That’s why there’s a diminishing return on input working hours. Putting in more hours can worsen your results. And your life’s quality.

I get up around six. After an hour of meditation, yoga, journaling, and whatever feels good, I write for about three hours. Then I read and add notes to my Roamkasten. At 11, I workout. Then, I take a long lunch break with my partner. Only after lunch, I turn on my phone.

My afternoons vary. I go for a walk with a friend. I take a bath. I have another deep work session for one of my clients, record an interview or volunteer for my NGO. But whatever I do, I make sure my phone and computer are switched off at 8 PM.

I still have workdays where I work too much. But whenever I do, I keep Glennon Doyle words in mind:

“Hard work is important. So are play and non-productivity. My worth is not tied to my productivity but to my existence.”

3.) Learning How to Learn Anything You Want

Learning is the only meta-skill you need to master because all other meta-skills depend on your ability to learn.

If you know how to learn, picking up philosophy or graphic design, or coding is so much easier. If you don’t, learning new skills is a daunting path.

In the first years of my reading journey, I ignored learning. Whenever a conversation revolved around a book I read, I could never remember much. I thought forgetting is my personal flow. But it isn’t.

Forgetting is essential for learning. Spaced repetition, one of the most effective learning strategies, allows some forgetting to occur between sessions. Thereby it strengthens the cues and routes for faster retrieval.

We learn something when we try to access it at different times (spacing) and in distinct contexts (variation). We learn when we connect existing knowledge to what’s in front of us (elaboration) and when we recall what we learned (retrieval).

Here’s how to remember anything you want from books:

Elaboration. Think while you read. Pause to make notes on how and when you could use this new insight. How does it relate to anything you already know? Write it down.
Retrieval. After you finish a book, think about what you want to remember. Recall from your mind what you want to stick with you. Write it down in your favorite tool — a journal, GoodReads, Notion, or RoamResearch.
Variation. Share what you learned with your friends. Talk about your insights in a mastermind group or use the Feynman technique and teach it to somebody else.
Spacing. Browse through your old book notes. Look at the title and test yourself on what you remember. This process feels slow and frustrating, but that’s how meaningful learning works.

When I first learned about the process, I fear it’s a time waste. But it isn’t. In Sönke Ahrens words:

“Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time”

Final Remarks

I could go on indefinitely because reading has also improved my life on so many levels (10-day fasts, slow sex, nose-breathing, psychedelic experiences, etc.). But I’ll stop for now and leave you with one powerful thought.

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. But most people don’t know about all their options. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

“One cannot apply what one knows in a practical manner if one does not know anything to apply.”

— Robert Sternberg

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How To Do Your Personal Annual Review and Get the Most from 2021

December 2, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim

The step-by-step guide to a year of your dreams.

2020 was a great year to learn more about yourself.

You were forced to cancel travel plans and minimize social interactions. You’ve likely spent more time with yourself than ever before. And while time alone might have brought your most unpleasant feelings to the surface, your experiences can reveal a promising way for your future.

Yet, this year per se isn’t enough to make you learn more about yourself. You can spend 52 weeks alone without evolving at all.

It’s about when and how you reflect on your experiences that will improve your life’s quality and prepare you for the next year.

Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely shared in an interview how she regularly reflects on her life’s obstacles and the lessons learned. And psychologist and educational scientist John Dewey summarized the effects best, writing:

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

I’ve run a personal annual review for the past four years now and continue to look for ways to improve it. Recently, I went through all my notes and distilled the practices that helped me the most.

4 Things You Need To Run Your Annual Review

You don’t need a fancy retreat to conduct your reflection. All it takes are four simple things.

2×3 hours of uninterrupted time. You don’t want to rush through your review in one sitting. For me, the reviews work best when I block three hours on two subsequent days. You can, however, also block two times 3 hours on a single day. Your life, your choices.

Paper, pen, and the printed questions. Your computer or your phone will easily distract you. Shut your devices off and prepare a technology-free working area. Print this article (you’ll find a printable version a the end) or write down the questions. You can always look up information afterward if you need it.

Journals, diaries, calendars, or other personal data. Your memory is good, but your documentation works better. Collect all personal evidence from the year before your review. It’ll help you answer the questions that follow. If you manage your life digitally, you can use your computer and phone (in flight mode) for part one.

A blank desk, floor, table, or a whiteboard. I’ve done my reviews on a beach chair, in a hostel, and on my desk. What works best is a big empty area, like a clean desk or an empty whiteboard.

Optional: People to work with. Depending on the COVID situation, it can be beneficial to do the review with two to three close friends. You can bounce ideas, verify your thoughts, and help each other focus.

Part 1: How to Kickstart Your Personal Review

The first three hours are all about reflection and examination. It’ll be your evidence-based foundation for the session that will follow in the second session.

Start by getting into the present moment. You can either do it with a 5-minute breathing meditation or by journaling about how you’re feeling right now. Then, ask yourself what you’re most grateful for in life right now.

Once you feel you’re in the right mindset, start going through your notes and impressions from the year. Flip your journals’ pages, look at the key events in your calendar, or think of your highlights and lowlights of the year. You don’t necessarily need to write anything down yet, but you can make some notes if you feel like it.

Now it’s time to answer questions that’ll help you organize your thoughts and feelings. You don’t need to answer them chronologically. You can even skip the ones that don’t feel right. However, I’ve found that the questions I felt resistance toward shined a light on something I tried to ignore.

Questions to Reflect Holistically

How have you lived your life in the past twelve months?
What residual feelings do you have about the past year?
What were your 2020 highlights?
When did you feel your heart most open this year?
What moment did you feel most alive this year?
What are you most proud of? Why?
What were your 2020 lowlights?
What was most challenging for you, and how did it make you feel?
How have you experienced crisis, loss, and pain this year?
What made you feel hurt, angry, or sad? Why?
What have your highlights and lowlights this year taught you? What are the life lessons you want to remember?

Questions to Reflect on Your Success & Growth

How have you grown and developed last year?
What were your three biggest work accomplishments? What contributed to them?
Are there any other goals apart from the work you achieved that you are proud of?
Have you developed any healthy habits you want to keep?
Have you developed any new skills? What helped you learning them?
What was the best decision you made all year? What did you learn from it?
What risks did you take, and what were the rewards?

Questions to Reflect on the People & Relationships in Your Life

For which people in your life are you most grateful?
Which qualities about relationships do you value most personally and professionally?
Which person has inspired you the most? How?
Which person had the biggest negative impact on your life? Why?
Are there any toxic friends in your life? How have you signaled your boundaries in the past year?
What new relationships enhanced your life? Who? How?
How has your relationship with yourself changed over the year?
Is there anything else you want to reflect on that hasn’t been asked yet?

Going through your memories and answering all of these questions might take more or less than three hours. Time is a mere reference point.

Once you feel your answers are complete, you can stop. If you feel like it, talk through them with a friend and explain what surprised you the most. Then, take a break and let it rest until you feel ready for part two.

Part 2: How to Make the Most From Your Insights

Now you’ve mastered the reflection; it’s time to start thinking ahead to 2021. Based on your foundation, you want to develop bigger aspirations and plan the processes neccessary to realize them.

Questions that Reveal Your Deepest Aspirations:

What happens when you really show up in the world? What are you really longing for?
What would a dream year look like for you in 2021?
What does success in 2021 mean for you?
What three big goals will you accomplish next year?
What three skills will you acquire?
We are now in December 2021. You integrated all your experience and learning from 2020, and 2021 was the most incredible year of your life — surpassing even your wildest expectations. With all your energy, write about your year — what happened and how did you feel?

Once you feel happy about your answers, it’s time to dig deeper. Even if it can feel difficult at first, it’s essential to answer your reason behind it. So, with all honesty, ask yourself: Why do you want to achieve it?

Do you want to receive external praise? Do you want to make your parents proud? Do you want to leave the world better than you found it? Do you want to spread love and happiness while fostering a healthy body?

None is better than the other. But knowing your ‘why’ will help you move faster towards your dreams.

Put Your Dreams into Actionable Goals and Processes

You’ve already mastered the deep work of your annual review. What’s left is a plan that helps you move towards your desired 2021 outcome.

When you skip this step, your annual review remains mere entertainment.

You won’t move towards your big goals.

I know because I made this mistake. In 2016 I didn’t translate my annual review into actionable steps. Guess what? My wildest dreams didn’t manifest.

In 2019 I applied the advice that follows. And despite the pandemic, I reached almost all of my goals. My mind and body are strong and healthy. I became self-employed and made a great living from working on my dreams. I run a weekly couple’s podcast with my partner and write six days a week. I live in an honest, exciting, and supportive relationship. I feel a deep appreciation and love for the people in my life.

The only thing that didn’t work out this year — and you’ll know why — is spending the cold European winter in a warm country.

Here’s how you can make it work for you.

Have Clear Goals but Focus On Your Process and Systems

It’s easier to focus on the outcome. But the goal is not in your control. By obsessing about the outcome, you prevent yourself from immersing in the process that leads to your outcome. As James Clear put it:

If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.

If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.

If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.

If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

So, instead of obsessing over the outcome, think about the processes and systems required to get to your goal. Again, James Clear:

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

One of my 2020 goals was to live in a strong and healthy body and mind. But instead of obsessing over the outcome, I came up with habits that would get me there. I focused on building a daily yoga practice and prolonging my daily meditation practice. I developed a feel-good plan to eat 99% plant-based food and do intermittent fasting almost every day.

I reached my goal because I focused on the process instead of the outcome.

Here are the questions that will help you:

How do your goals for 2021 translate into actionable habits and processes?
What habits, behaviors, or attitudes will you need to develop or adopt next year?
What things or habits do you need to stop doing?

Once you’ve broken down your dreams into actionable processes, summarize your reflection on one clean sheet. This summary will be the anchor for 2021. Place it somewhere clearly visible, like next to your mirror or on the wall behind your desk.

Close On A High Note

Congratulations! You’re almost done. To finish your annual review and close the year behind you, write down your answer to:

How are you feeling right now? How do you feel about 2021?

If you feel like it, share your summary with your friends or family. In this way, you create accountability partners who might remind you or check in with your progress.

In Summary

It’s easy to skip your annual review and continue as before.

It’s much harder to take six hours, face your feelings, keep your focus, and derive actionable steps.

An annual review isn’t easy. But when you commit to taking an honest look at your year— your highs, your lows, your actions, your mindset — you shift your life’s trajectory.

That’s what will help you live the life of your dreams.

I hope you’ll find the energy to achieve anything you want.

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Don’t Just Do — Reflection Can Help You Take Better Action

November 15, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim

Here’s how.

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

The other week I went for a walk with a friend. He was part of a national athlete team and among the top LoL gamers, studied statistics used to make a living from day trading, and now works as a mental coach.

While we wandered along the Danube and talked about my current research interest in learning and reading, he said something interesting:

“There is nothing more powerful, more instructive than learning from your past experience.”

A truth we often forget. We confuse activity with progress and seek new, better, innovative ideas and solutions. Meanwhile, we repeat the same mistakes and thought patterns.

If we’re not visibly active, we believe we’re not learning.

When we don’t pause to think and to contemplate, we keep circling in a limited sphere at a higher velocity. We can read 50 books to 10x our productivity and still lose the most important life lessons. By acting without looking backward, we close our eyes to the bigger picture.

Reading this article, you’ll learn why reflection works and how you can make it work for you. Understanding the power of introspection is one of the rare concepts you can’t unlearn.

Science and Gates on the Benefits of Reflection

Reflection is the active decision to think about your past. Or, as researchers put it:

“Reflection is the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.”

Even if our eyes can’t witness its effects, introspection is powerful. By ruminating, you’re distilling the key insights from your experience. Connect your past with the present moment is an effective learning technique. Neuroscientist Roediger and neurosurgeon McDaniel write:

“Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these new experiences and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.”

But what’s so good about this strong learning effect? Scientists from Harvard Business School explored this question and state:

“Reflection is a powerful mechanism by which experience is translated into learning. In particular, we find that individuals perform significantly better on subsequent tasks when they think about what they learned from the task they completed.”

Apart from the scientific consensus, well-known people rely on the power of reflection.

Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely shared in an interview how she filled more than 20 notebooks with her life’s obstacles and her lessons learned.

Before learning from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates said he “had every minute packed and thought that was the only way you could do things.” Bill concludes Warren taught him the importance of giving himself time to think and reflect.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

— Carl Jung

How You Can Make Reflection Work for You

Reflection isn’t complex. It can be an easy addition to your toolbox, close at hand whenever you need it. Here are three strategies to start your own reflective practice.

#1 Level Up Your Journaling Practice

You can call it a bullet journal, reflective journal, or learning journal. As long as you spend time pondering on your past, the effect is the same. The key is not to capture events or facts but rather the process and how you felt about it.

Here are prompts to use on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis:

What went well? Why?
What went wrong? Why?
What new did you learn? How can you use this insight?
Which activities or tasks did you skip? Why? What can you learn from your behavior for your next steps?
On which topic did you change your opinion? How does this shift affect your next decisions?
Who are the most important people in your life? Why?

Plus, you can level up your journaling practice with evidence-based tricks. Write sitting in different positions, write for yourself, use the language you feel comfortable with, use diagrams and drawings, or record your own voice.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

— Steve Jobs

#2 Meet Up With Friends for Joint Reflection

This one isn’t a substitute but a great addition to your journaling practice. Meeting with a group of peers for joint reflection can be powerful.

Heron, a social science pioneer, explains the method in his book:

You have got the choice of which topics you bring up. It can be a job-related reflection circle, discussing relational topics, or generally share personal journal excerpts or your thoughts behind it.

If you want more guidance, you can use these free reflection cards to get additional inspiration. Structure your meeting in facts, feelings, insights, and actions.

#3 Distill Key Lessons in Your Annual Review

The dark months around New Year are a great reminder to pause, reflect, and rethink the past 12 months. A yearly review is powerful. It can uncover valuable self-knowledge.

Here are ten powerful questions for a reflective practice at the end of a year:

Which things have you discovered this year? Which do you want to keep?
What experiences, people, and accomplishments are you most grateful for? Why?
Which residual feelings do remain if you think about the past year? Are you ready to let them go?
What was the biggest struggle in the past months? How did you tackle it, and what did you learn on the way?
How have you grown and developed in the past year? In what area(s) of your life did you make progress?
What have you discovered about yourself?
What moment did you feel the most alive this year?
When did you feel your heart most open this year?
What inspired you the most in the past months? How did this impact your life?
Based on your experience from last year, which advice would you give yourself for the next year?

“Extraordinary individuals stand out in the extent to which they reflect — often explicitly — on the events of their lives, large as well as small…by seizing the opportunity to leverage and frame these experiences, we gain agency over them. And this heightened agency, in turn, places us in a stronger position to deal with future experiences, even as it may alter our own sense of strengths and possibilities.”

— Howard Gardner

Final Words

We don’t have to be visibly active to learn. Progress starts with self-awareness. If we aren’t aware of a problem, we can’t improve.

With practices like reflective journaling, reflection circles, and yearly reviews, we can better understand our thoughts and emotions while exploring how they affect our behavior. We find pieces of our self-puzzle and can hold on to them for good. Step by step, we discover what life paths we want to take, leave, or create.

Let’s stop to rush through life and, instead, take time for reflection. In the words of American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey:

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”