💌 3R System and Warren Buffets’ 5/25 for Achieving Goals

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📝 3R System and Warren Buffets’ 5/25 for Achieving Goals

Only 9-12% of people who make resolutions in the new year actually keep them.

However, what if I told you that if you commit to less goals, you could actually achieve more?

But first, let me tell you a little story that will introduce some of the rationale behind the framework and system that I am about to share. (By the way, if you haven’t read last week’s reflection exercise - please do so! it’ll help prime you for today’s exercise!)

Mike Flint (pictured above) was Warren Buffet’s private pilot for over 10 years. However, one day on the plane, Flint opened up to Buffet about all the career goals that he still wanted to achieve in his life. Warren Buffet then proceeded to give him this advice.

1. Buffet asked Flint to write down his top 25 career goals.

2. Then Buffet explained Flint had to review his list, and circle his 5 “favourite” items: his Top 5 Goals. Not more and not less than 5.

3. Forget about the rest.

“Take a good look at the twenty goals you didn’t circle”, Buffet said. “These are your avoid-at-all-cost items. They’re what have the most potential to distract you. They eat away your time and energy and prevent you from focusing on what matters. The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘No’ to almost everything.”

He’s not alone in this thinking. There is another author, Gary Keller, author of the New York Times bestseller, “The ONE Thing.” His technique is similar to that of Buffet, except instead of keeping 5 items on your list, you keep one, and only one. You can read the book summary here.

All of the approaches I shared above share one common theme: if you’re trying to get sh*t done in 2022, prioritize ruthlessly. 

By removing all the noise, all the unimportant things, and only focusing on only one or few things that we strive to achieve, we can highly increase our chances of reaching our goals and living a life that is aligned with our values, interests, and desires.

Focus solely on fully committing to smaller goals to complete them more effectively instead of juggling all your goals at once. You can’t focus your energy on 25 things at the same time, in any domain.

Now, that all sounds good in theory. But you might ask, how do we actually go about doing this in our lives?

Let’s get tactical! Here are the two frameworks that I’m using this year. Feel free to do either or both, depending on your preference.

Option A: Choose a theme word for the year.

(Recommended for someone who is more fluid but still wants to set intentions for the year)

Theme words are essentially words that sum up how you want to feel and/or how you want to be. Similar to your values, theme words serve as your compass, helping you make important decisions about where and how you direct your time, energy, money, and other resources. At their core, theme words are your intentions. It helps you focus your attention on what matters most. Theme words can also keep you grounded. They offer you direction when you feel directionless, and they help you remember your “why” when you get distracted by competing priorities.

Option B: 3R’s Framework (Review, Ritualize, Readjust)

(Recommended for someone who wants a little bit more structure in their lives and likes to set goals and systems)

The second framework is around setting focused intentions and designing the rituals, systems, and environments that work best for you. As James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits” states, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.” 

• Review

  • Ask yourself these two questions:

    • What are the things you regret not doing?

    • What are the areas in your life that you want to work on?

  • Write all of these down. Choose only the top 3 that matter the most to you.

    • Warren Buffett chose 5 for your life. Gary Keller says 1. I always like to choose somewhere in the middle so that’s why I chose 3 for myself. You can choose to do 2 or 4, but the point here is to help you focus only on the essential goals. Commit to less, and I promise you’ll actually accomplish more. 

• Ritualize

  • Ask yourself these two questions:

    • What small steps can you incorporate in your life to make progress on this goal?

    • What systems, environments, or rituals can you set up that you will be able to do consistently?

• Readjust

  • Start incorporating these rituals or steps in your life, and then at the end of every other month, analyze whether you have been able to make progress on or be consistent with those goals and then iterate based on what works for you. Readjust your goals and expectations based on the review.

  • The goal is that these monthly reviews should be relatively simple. You have at most 3 goals at any time. If you accomplish those 3 goals quickly, then that’s perfect! You have momentum and can continue to re-evaluate and switch out your goals once you’ve completed those 3.

That’s it! You can choose to do either or both options discussed above (I like to do both!), but the act of setting focused intentions can reap maximal benefits and help you actually live a life that is more aligned with your values because it helps you prioritize what actually matters to you.

Cheers to being a part of the 9% of people who stick to their new years’ goals! 😉 

🔮 Weekly Finds:

• A golden Twitter thread that provides 19 tips about sustainable performance. What does it really take to live a healthy, happy, balanced life and be at your best for a sustained, long amount of time? I have learned these lessons and insights (the hard way) and am still trying to implement them in my life, but grateful that someone was able to concisely distill this in a thread. It’s so good! I promise you won’t regret it and it will improve your life. 

• John Mayer goes on Call Her Daddy to discuss how he manages performance anxiety and New Years' resolutions. He says that he is very different from other musicians in that he doesn’t feed off of the energy of the audience, and is still constantly worried about whether his audience is having a good time. Additionally, he gives advice about how he doesn’t really do resolutions, but rather tries to do something a little “uncharacteristic” each year.

• Want to know what your values are? Here’s a worksheet to help you identify the key values that matter to you.

• Author Daniel Pink on the power and value of regret. If you’re doing 2023 resolutions, you should pick two of your 2022 regrets, then use them as the key goals and resolutions to work on.

• When you face what you’re afraid of and nothing bad happens, you feel less afraid. Research now shows that conquering your fears doesn’t mean getting rid of them forever. In reality, it is consistent exposure to those fears that keep them at bay. In 2023, face your fears as often as you need to so that nothing gets in the way of living the life you want!

• PSA: Brain breaks aren't your brain being "idle." Your brain is actively rewiring and helps improve performance. Another reason why breaks are good for you! All too often, a break is seen as a way to cool off, reenergize, and then return to the vital work of actual practice. Stepping away from an activity, it turns out, is not stepping away from the activity at all.  Cohen’s team discovered that after learning new information, our brains continue to process it, using cognitive downtime as a virtual staging ground to process, organize, and integrate learned information. It is neural replay, the “temporally compressed reactivation of neural activity patterns representing behavioral sequences during rest.” 

• When mindfulness does — and doesn’t — help at work. While mindfulness can in fact be beneficial in some situations, it can be less effective and even counterproductive in others. Specifically, breath-based and loving-kindness meditation can help reduce the stress associated with emotionally charged social interactions, but it can actually make people less helpful in situations that require them to take accountability (e.g. managers, executive leadership, etc.).

• Things you can do to soothe yourself when you’re in fight or flight mode.

• How do you take care of yourself in a society that glorifies overwork? Sure, missing a deadline by 1 week because you "didn't work hard enough" sucks. But missing a deadline by 2 weeks and causing a huge [software] fire because you made some mistake while being sleep-deprived is even worse. Alex Chiou (Co-Founder of joinTaro) provides tactical advice on the highest-impact ways to take care of yourself.

🗞 In the News:

• Improv course may help teens learn to tolerate uncertainty. Want to learn how to tolerate uncertainty and reduce anxiety? Take an improv class! (btw, this is literally one of my bucket list items for 2023!)

• Prince Harry "Hates" Himself For His Reaction to Meghan Markle's Mental Health Struggles.

• The top 2022 Google search trends were about being healthier and happier, not Covid 19. Why is this a surprise, but not a surprise? 

• World Bank gives Ukraine EUR 100M loan.

📝 Reminders:

If the holidays aren't an easy time for you, listen to this reel:

💌 🎄 Wishing you and your loved ones the very best and cheers to a new year! Please reply to this email or submit here if you have any feedback.

See you all in the new year!