Stepping Off the Merry-Go-Round

I’ve had an enjoyable afternoon looking at the last 24 months of my professional activity and asking myself the 3 big review questions:

• What should I start doing?

• What should I keep doing?

• What should I stop doing?

Prompted by a session Jennifer Rosenfeld is giving online this week, it felt great to carve out the time to stop producing, and just reflect. A mentor of mine always used to call this getting off the merry-go-round, and he was a master at planning and implementation. I have a regular weekly/monthly/quarterly review process and these questions come up regularly, but specifically this time I got out my calendar and clicked through each week, reflecting on the pros and cons of some of my past decisions.

I opened up a page in my Baron Fig Confidant Notebook, and after doing some work, eventually transferred a more polished version into Notion. I now have this document for easy review, any time I want to add to it down the road or review while making a decision.

I encourage you to give this exercise a try. And if you do, shoot me a note and let me know how it went. It’s widely known that saying “No” can be difficult, but cleaning up the map of our past can make the road forward a little less hazy.