Coming to you this week from 📍 Bend, OR & Seattle, WA
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Hi friends –
There’s nothing like closing out a year than sneaking in a quick 3-day to Bend, OR (yes, for a third time since our nomadic life began!) to close things out. Though we love Bend, this trip was a particular delight as it was a time to look back on our year, reflect, and design the year we want to have in 2022 with some friends (our ‘accountability’ crew) all amidst a hint of snow to end December in style❄️ Thanks to our friends Jannell & Greg for hosting and @bennovak.spire for joining – more on our ‘planning’ process below!
🎇 A quick hit from the best of the content we’ve been consuming:
- This one has been on my ‘to-listen’ list but Midori has been raving about it. Check out Tim Ferriss’s episode with Jerry Colonna on engineering ‘sabbaticals’ into your year. If living your life by design is part of your 2022 plans, this just might help kickstart your thinking for the better.
📆 Interested in a quarterly planning process of your own? Here’s what we do!
- We’ve followed this process every quarter for nearly the past two years. It all starts with a meticulous lookback on your past year/quarter. Look for peak high and low emotional experiences and denote them. Looking at old photos helps. If you’re a true Capricorn (🙂) your calendar should be enough. Use this process as the foundation of deciding what you want to experience next quarter
- Next up, the fun part… Write a long, detailed love letter to yourself as if you’re looking back on the year ahead. Grab a drink, find a cozy spot, and just write (in excruciating detail) how your ideal 2022 went and what life is like now. Sounds silly, but we promise it will get the wheels turning on what’s important to you in this next year.
- Finally, use this masterpiece letter to write out some goals. SMART goals are great, but we prefer following the 12-week year process. This involves looking at the next 12 weeks as if it were a year. Instead of procrastinating and making all your progress in the final months of the year, force yourself to make a year’s worth of progress in an impressive 12-weeks, thought through with milestones and all. Categories help (health, wealth, relationships, etc.) but progress is most important. You will amaze yourself with what you can do in 12 weeks if you do it by design!
- Bonus: pick a word to capture the essence of your year (thanks to @davdhopp for introducing us to this!). It will be a word you return to for reminding yourself of what’s important. Anything goes. My word will be detox and Midori’s will be momentum. How about yours?
🎬 A terrible (+ good) Christmas movie to cozy up to and enjoy the holidays with
- The Princess Switch 3 – if you’ve watched the first two, this third installment needs no explanation. It’s bad (but entertaining) and it just keeps going!
- Klaus – this one is an award-winning gem every bit worthy of the honors it has received. Worth the watch – enjoy!
🎩 Hats off to those of you taking the final two weeks of the year to relax, but also think about how you want this next year to go. If these past 18 months have taught us anything, it’s the importance of living life by design. We’re thrilled to have you all on the journey with us. Happy holidays!
🎄 Bye, Buddy, hope you find your dad,
Akaash (& Midori)
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