I conduct an impact review at the end of each year, looking back at how I spent my time. In 2018, I published a shareholder letter listing the questions I ask:
- Was the work (whether paid or pro bono) useful, soul enriching, or on my mission path?
- Did it have a positive impact on the world, an organization, another individual, myself?
- Would I seek to do something similar in the next five years?
I’d like to hear from other people who take stock around this time each year. What questions do you ask yourself? What measures do you use?
Please share in the comments.
HI Susannah, Your questions are very similar to mine. Additionally, I ask:
* Do I feel that I am a valued member of the team?
Ooooh, I love that question. It can be answered in multiple ways: Was I paid fairly? Were my ideas listened to? Was my time respected?
This is from a blog post I wrote in 2018 “Taking a Look at the Bigger Picture”. (http://womenofteal.blogspot.com/2018/01/taking-look-at-big-picture.html)
So my next step was to look at each advocacy opportunity and asked myself:
-how effective am I at doing that work?
– am I the only one doing that work?
-if I am the only one can another advocate/person do it?
-how much does the work benefit other survivors/patients?
-how many people are effected by the work I do?
-do I ever regret having agreed to do the work and feel that way when I am doing it?
-does the work ever prevent me from doing other things – like hang out with my husband, grand-kids or dog?
-does that work bring me JOY?
These questions still hold true for me today.
Thanks, Dee! You capture the spirit of “highest and best use” and apply specificity to it. I’m going to add these questions to mine this year.
And I’m honored that my Letter to shareholders got a mention in your post.
Hi Susannah! My other question would be, “Do the people I’m working with feed my soul or deflate it?” Another way to put it, “Am I doing the work well, at least in part, because of the quality of the people I work with or in spite of them?”
Fantastic question! Thanks, Lisa.
I need to drop a preliminary note here, because this has kept tugging at me since it first popped up hours ago.
You know my bewildering past and bewildering path into unplanned advocacy. I’ve constantly wondered what’s going on, what forces have swept me up, and what I want to do about it. You know that I didn’t start any of it *except* perhaps by the simple act of asking questions about “What the heck is going on here??” It started with discovering garbage in my chart in 2009 and has continued through years of witnessing the culture of healthcare resisting change with gyroscope-like tenacity despite mounds of reasoning and evidence.
I don’t have a formal process like yours, at least not yet. I do ask myself that same question, “What’s going on here??” (yes with a double-?) then ponder my other eternal question: “What could be said that would make any difference?”
It’s not a year-end process. I guess my “cycle,” such as it is, is more continuous.
I should add that part of those recurring questions is to ask, “Is it working? Is it getting anywhere? Is anything changing?”
I just went back to your original 2018 post and re-read my comments there (and your post). Sobering – and I *did* post there about a retrospective series I’d just done called “Evolution.”
In subsequent years I’ve realized that in 2017 I figure out the “Gordian knot” nature of American healthcare, which I then summarized as “a malignant tumor that can’t stop killing its host.” And it was at that point that I stopped seeking understanding, because I’d found my answer.
There’s more reflecting to be done, so thanks for this post.
Hooray! Thank you for sharing your reflections. Remember to include all the other ways you spend your time — as a caregiver, as a parent, as a grandpa — and weigh those activities up as part of any reckoning. That’s what caring for my dad taught me in 2017 and I’ve carried that forward since.
I love this. And especially having been born in Omaha (where our financial advisor still lives), I always appreciate a shoutout to Warren Buffett’s annual letters.
Today I’m drafting my article for volume XL of our family’s annual “Priority News” letter. My parents, Mary and Tom Prior, were married 40 years ago, and have sent out this letter every year since. Today I’m summing up the year.
In December 2021, I had two goals:
1.) Be present for my friends and family at major life events (2 bachelor parties and 7 weddings).
2.) Release my book “with my head held high.”
I made it to 1 bachelor party and 6 weddings! And the book is now released with endorsements from Senator Kaine and Ed Yong, along with coverage in the LA Times, Newsweek, and Science. I feel ready to take some time off.
I can also relate to your other post about making decisions based on panic that were off-mission and paid below market value: I had a misadventure dog-sitting a Great Dane for a week for $350 I thought I needed — the puppy destroyed a good bit of property and I learned why people crate their dogs. Evidence here: https://twitter.com/r_prior/status/1576957588763475968
A reminder for me to stay on-mission and stick to writing!
Legit lol at the pictures you included with that tweet. A misadventure off-mission indeed!!!
Thanks for all you do, Ryan! And if anyone reading has not yet read his book, THE LONG HAUL, I highly recommend it. One reviewer called it a “gripping, fast-paced history of the present moment.”
(OK, yes, that reviewer was me.)
I love this. Since I am a patient, my three themes (which I also use as filters and questions for myself) are:
1. am I helping myself to heal
2. am I helping others to heal
3. am I helping those who can help others
These have served me well to target where I am volunteering and where I want to spend my time working. They are what I refer to as my own personal strategic plan.
Barry – I like you list. especially #3.
Dee
Me too! #3 is community-building — which is so you, Burt, and so you, too, Dee.
Burt, I love those questions, and they show up clearly in who you are for us all! Inspiring.
Have I been true to myself?
Six words of wisdom! Thank you, Maneesh.