How to make your lifelong goals move forward today ? The Inverted Pyramid
If you want to get the nuggets of this article and save time, here are the takeaways (end of the article)
- Inverted Pyramid Framework
- Actionable Next Steps
- Tools
Intro
The purpose of this post is to share with you the system I have designed in order to manage time and align lifelong goals with actions and tasks to perform today.
If you dream to become a fashion designer, a professional golf player, a successful writer, or a great partner, what can you do about it today?
Large goals tend to scare us and leave a lot of room for procrastination (nothing new here). How many times did we tell ourselves:
**Watching Netflix**
“Ok 20 minutes left on this episode and then I’ll go [fill with any productive task]”
**Netflix auto-plays next episode**
“ Well, I guess it can wait an hour more. I have time”
Netflix 1 – 0 Dream Goal
Having time is too good an excuse to not start something at all.
I certainly never had the time to start writing anything, I never had time to take care of my personal finances, or to meditate.
The truth is : I was full of s**t. I did not see it as a priority, I was scared to fail, and I didn’t really decide why it was important to me.
And since I had a lifetime … well … watching one more episode of my series won’t hurt.
Wrong Franck!
The Whole Story
In the midst of the quarantine period we faced in France, our company had switched to a full remote organisation, changing how to manage our time and how to interact with each other. This challenging time has enable me to improve the system I’ve been designing over the past few month to manage my time and my goals. This is the system I want to share with you.
Last week I shared my Google calendar with some of my friends during dinner. The reaction was brutal :
Man, seeing your calendar gives me the chills, it’s sooo overwhelming. You’re a freak!
Well … I get it. I might have been a little obsessed over time management lately. But seriously, am I the only one planning a 30 minute time slot to call my grand ma’ ?
** Silence ** 🤨
Have I always been that weird? I don’t think so. I checked my calendar: same week, a year ago. Quite a difference:
And a year before:
(to make things clear I was working during that time, really I swear!)
That’s when I realised that over the past two years, my life and the way I‘ve been handling it had changed radically.
From employee, to freelance, to co-founder of a startup. Changes had been implemented in every aspects of my life: from my habits, my food, my body, my sleeping schedule, even my toothbrush.
I designed a system that would help me achieve my lifetime goals and make them move forward today. Today!
This system is certainly not perfect, I sometimes struggle with the discipline it requires, but it has helped me a great deal in achieving more things professionally and personally as well.
It’s like a pyramid.
The Inverted Pyramid
The pyramid is composed of six levels which you use to manage your daily tasks. You start wide with life aspirations, and you end up with the task you are going to perform in the next 30 minutes.
You make sure that what you’re working on today is going to help your lifetime goals, dreams and achievements
Level 1 — Life Planning
Life planning is probably one of the most difficult and scariest part of the method. In fact, The process mixes the professional and personal aspirations of your life.
Lay down the goals you want to achieve for your life, and break it down in smaller chunks. Find the smallest possible chunks (as it will help you through the next steps of the method)
To give you an example:
- I want to be a writer, so I need to publish articles, maybe 10 a month, so I need to write on a regular basis, let’s write 30 minutes each day
The inspiration comes from the Swiss PDP approach, adapted on a personal template:
- Aspirations: design who you want to be and what you want to achieve
- Outcome: set a desirable and exciting goal linked to your achievement
- Project: break your aspiration into smaller achievable chunks
- Task: slice it further down into something you could achieve in a week
Once you’ve accomplished this step, your course is set for a while. Don’t worry there will always be room to review and adapt your aspirations in the future.
Now that you are excited about the life you imagine for yourself, let’s dig further to ensure that you have a feedback loop to monitor and make your aspirations move forward
Level 2 - Yearly Planning
Your next timeframe is the year, where you will use the Past Year Review method, based on the one presented by Tim Ferriss on his blog.
This step will help you prioritise the projects you are going to focus on this year.
You’re not going to be able to have everything done, overnight. And if it is something I learned this year, it is the importance of patience (yeah it took me a while to accept patience …).
This step of the process is combining a review of your past year performance and planning the next year ahead of you.
It usually consist of going over your Google Calendar (any other tool works as long as it has some history of what you’ve been doing over the past year).
Sort what has brought you positive feelings and what has brought you negative ones. This goes for engagement, people, and experiences. Based on the method you’ll select and sort out which were the peak moments during the year and act on the spot to plan more of the good and cut on the worse for the next year. Tim Ferriss goes even further, building a Not To Do List for the bad stuff you really don’t want to experience anymore
Since your timeframe is the year in this part of the method, you will take time to « roadmap » the next one.
- What is your priority this year? How are things going to be one year from now
- What are the priorities for the first few months?
- What are the projects you couldn’t finish last year that you would like to re-plan for next year?
At the end of the Yearly Review you’ll be set for next month
Level 3 - Monthly Reviews
The month timeframe still leaves a lot of room for procrastination, and you might easily get trapped in the oh-my-god-how-will-I-finish-this-in-the-last-week feeling.
You don’t want to feel that. And believe it or not it’s easy to avoid this feeling of pressure and disappointment.
Monthly reviews help you slice out your monthly goals and spread them over multiple weeks.
Take the projects you want to achieve over the month, break it down into chunks which seem achievable over a week time period.
It will force you to plan the steps you’ll have to go through in order to reach your goal one month from now.
The ritual you can use is the following
- Sit down every month for two to three hours
- Review what you’ve achieved last month
- Prioritise new goals and projects you couldn’t fit in the previous month
Level 4 - Weekly Reviews
We closing up ! Things are getting real !
When we are at the moment of weekly reviews, we already have a pretty large amount of projects in stock, ready to go into execution.
The method is similar and you probably already know what you’ll be doing during this review :
- Sit down every week for thirty minutes,
- Review what you’ve achieved last week
- Prioritise new tasks for next week
Of course you’ll have a look on the monthly goals to be sure your tasks are aligned.
Personally, I use the Sunday afternoon to go through this planification. After choosing the tasks which will be prioritised during next week, I open my Google Calendar and spread them out. I also leave some “white space” in order to leave room in case I need to reprioritise during the week due to unexpected events.
No need to overload your timetable, keep your goals within reach.
“As in freedom, so in wine, there is a wholesome moderation” — Seneca
Same goes for your calendar: moderation.
In terms of tools, you can organise your timetable based on the Pomodoro Technique:
- Divid your tasks in blocks of 30 minutes, where 25 minutes will be dedicated to performing the task and 5 minute to take a break
- Every 4 pomodoros take 30’ break.
The weekly is the first method I have been using. It is certainly the corner stone of the Inverted Pyramid, and if there is one review I would recommend you to implement, it is the Weekly Review. You can have a Weekly Review even if you don’t have a plan for your life.
Level 5 - Daily Review
At that point, when you wake up in the morning your day is pretty much set, just walk through your calendar to have a better grasp and a reminder of what your day will be.
Every morning, or the evening before, you can spend 15 to 20 minutes looking at your calendar and reprioritising the tasks for the upcoming day.
The key is to identify the Most Important Task (MIT) for the upcoming day. The one task that is more important than any other.
Defer anything that is not a priority.
Daily reviews can be combined with writing routines
- Journaling, to capture your monkey mind, thoughts and feelings (see Tim Ferriss post on that)
- Finances check, review your bank accounts and spendings for 10 minutes
Level 6 - Hour by hour
Enjoy the ride, all is set and ready to go. Buckle up your belt and execute your plan.
Follow your pomodoro routine, and take breaks it is important ! Your brain needs to have a bit of a break from time to time (meaning: 5 minute break every 25 minutes of work and a 30 minute break every 2 hours)
Again, no need for excessive pressure here, if you face some glitching within your pomodoro routine, acknowledge it and move on. Your day can be more or less under control and being able to adapt to unexpected situations will help you manage frustration and stress.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you’ve survived reading through all those paragraphs! The end is near.
System is set up. You are ready to go!
It might take some time and some iterations to make the system flowing. Don’t worry!
You are actually designing a system and an engine that will empower you to improve the ownership of your life, achieve more projects and take control over what you aspire and who you want to be.
SUMMARY — KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Inverted Pyramid Framework
Lifetime Goals
Take a day, think about your future who you want to be and what you want to accomplish over the next few years.
This ritual mixes personal and professional aspirations based on the Swiss PDP Approach. It aims to designing your lifelong goals.
Yearly review — take half a day every year
Take time to have a retrospect over the passed year. Goals you’ve achieved, things you’ve enjoyed, and things you will want to avoid
Plan ahead for the upcoming year and lay out the goals you want to achieve over the next few months
Monthly Review — take three hours every month
Every last Sunday of the month, block 3 hours of your time and look back on what you’ve achieved over the past few weeks.
Are the goals you’ve set for the month completed ? What are the steps which need adjustments ? Assess your performance, set up next month priority.
Base your priority on the goals defined in the Yearly Review.
Weekly Review — take one hour every week
Sit down every Sunday and take an hour to reflect on the passed week. What tasks did you achieve? Are you on track to reach your monthly goals?
Lay out the tasks you are planning for the following week in your calendar
Daily Review — take twenty minutes every day
Take 20 minutes at the end of your day or in the morning to plan for the upcoming day.
Isolate the Most Important Task (MIT), the task that ensures that your day will be 80% fulfilled if you finish it. Decide the task you’re gonna commit to and focus on, and the one you are going to defer or cancel.
Hourly Review
You’ve already done all the planning and decision making.
Stick to your plan, take breaks regularly, and execute using the Pomodoro Technique.
Actionable Next Steps
- If you have no idea what to do first: implement weekly reviews
- Take 15 to 20 minutes in the evening of each day to decide what will be the Most Important Task the following day
- During the day, take breaks
Tools
- Evernote
- Google Calendar
- Pomodoro Technique
- Journaling
- Slicing time and projects
Sources
Swiss PDP Approach
Past Year Review — Tim Ferriss
Pomodoro Technique
7 habits of Highly Effective People — Stephan R. Covey
