goals Archives - Michael Bianco

How To Get Things Done

Time is the great leveler. Regardless of where you live, what job you have, how much money you have, or what culture you live in, you have 24 hours in a day. We have a responsibility to cultivate our resources. At the very top of this list is our time. We live in an age when our time is more limited than ever. From big companies (Instagram, Twitter, etc.) to our friends (messaging us all day), every aspect of our culture nibbles away at any minute of spare time that we have. Managing our time well is more important than ever and is a crucial aspect of being a wholesome and effective person. Here’s what we want to accomplish by managing our time well: Integrity. We want to do what we say we will do without being reminded. Clear Priorities…

Best of 2023

I’ve always enjoyed the "best of" posts—it’s a great way to find something interesting & new. I wanted to add to the fun this year! Following up on my 2023 retrospective, here are my favorites of the last year. Texts. Continues to be my all-time favorite app. Texting has always been a massive pain for me and Texts has solved that problem: snooze, scheduled send, tags, multiple inboxes, cross platform app, etc. Can’t recommend it enough. SuperHuman. I resisted using this email client for a while. It’s not improving as quickly as it should, there are still weird issues with it, but some of the core features are really useful (multiple inboxes, better keyboard shortcuts, and fine-tuned UX)…

2023 Goal Retrospective

I’ve been doing retrospectives on my yearly goals for a while now. Here’s my review of last year’s goals and my thoughts about what I can change going forward. (as an aside, I’ve been working on open-sourcing some of the templates we use as a family to plan out our life—if you are interested in taking a look while I refine them, drop me an email.) What Worked Tracking daily + weekly habits works to reinforce their importance. Setting clear goals with specific metrics has continued to be successful. When a goal is less specific (no dates, no metrics, more of a ending state / lagging indicator vs input-based) A shared goal with my wife to go on two sans-kids trips (harder than it sounds with four young kids!) was great…

2022 Goal Retrospective

I’ve been doing retrospectives on my yearly goals for a while now. Here’s my review of last year’s goals and my thoughts about what I can change in this years goals. (as an aside, I’ve been working on open sourcing some of the templates we use as a family to plan out our life—if you are interested in taking a look while I refine them, drop me an email.) What Worked I started using Streaks this year to track key habits I wanted to maintain or start. For well-structured habits, this worked. I had a daily recurring p1 task on todoist to track habits on Streaks and that was effective at keeping me looking at it daily…

2021 Goal Retrospective

I’ve been doing yearly retrospectives on my yearly goals for awhile now. My belief in incremental improvement being the key to achieving anything great life has only been strengthened as time has gone on. Here’s my review of last year’s goals and my thoughts about what I can change going forward. What Worked Focusing on just two habit changes for the year is the right balance for me. I think of a habit as a recurring behavior I want to change, as opposed to a specific one-time event or project completion. I implemented the two habits I targeted. Setting goals that are just hard enough is really critical. I set a couple goals that were just enough of a stretch that I felt like I could push and get them across the line…

2020 Goal Retrospective

Another year, another yearly goal retrospective. This year included a grab bag of curveballs, most notably COVID. Although there was a lot of loss this year, I’m blessed to be able to say this year was really good for me and my family. Without further ado, here’s the retro! What Worked Not doing the quarterly reviews and focusing on the monthly reviews. In this season of life (young kids) quiet/focused time is precious and it’s not possible to spend too much time planning together (or individually) for that matter. Small, specific goals that created a habit or helped figure out a workflow worked well. We should continue to pick key habits and work on them through a focused goal…

2019 Goal Retrospective

I’ve been doing retrospective’s on my yearly goals for a couple years now. Although it’s a little late, I wouldn’t want to break the habit (plus, I’m trying to open source my thinking). Let’s go! What Worked Creating a distinction between habits and goals. I have a separate “habit document” where I document habits that are important to me. Setting a goal to kickstart a habit. Habit-goals shouldn’t be all, or even most, of your goals for the year but having one or two habit-goals can be really effective at changing behavior. It was useful to commit to an action (like hiring a personal trainer) to force building momentum for a specific habit…

Life Categories for Your 2020 Goals

Each year my wife and I go through a review process where we set goals and habit targets. We’ve been doing it for five years and it’s amazing to see the progress we’ve both made. It’s also been powerful to set joint goals that we can work on together. I’ve found it helpful to think over the "categories" of your life. A couple of years ago I wrote out my main life categories and it’s time to update that list: Spiritual Marriage Kids Health Intellectual Work Adventure, beauty, and fun. Intentionally pursuing outdoor adventure and just-for-fun activities with friends is a new thing for me…

2018 Goal Retrospective

Every year I enjoy doing a retrospective on last year’s goals. I believe there is value is "open sourcing your brain": your ideas may help someone and you may get invaluable feedback to help you improve. There’s also a strange sense of social accountability created for myself that helps me ensure I improve this year. So, with that in mind, here we go! What worked Doing something small to move a goal forward. Once you see progress you’ll be motivated to dig into the goal more and make progress. Reduce friction on goals which you are not naturally motivated to achieve. For instance, if you want to drink more water everyday, buy a water purifier to make the water taste better. Scheduling time on Sunday to work on goals…

2017 Goal Retrospective

I love yearly goal planning with my wife. It’s been an awesome practice that we started years ago thanks to The Best Year Ever program and the promptings of David DeWolf. It’s truly changed our lives: it’s amazing to see how many big, important goals you can hit each year if you have focus and clarity at the outset of the year. I try to do a retrospective in most areas of my life, but I especially enjoy doing one in regards to my yearly goals. I’ve found identifying and implementing small, incremental improvements to important aspects of life to be incredibly useful…

Tag: goals