Ilias Bartolini - just views and stuff of all sorts I care to share :wq

In the part 1 and 2 of this series I explained “why” and “how” you should do a personal review.

In part 3 I said that this review is for you and to reflect on yourself!
…honestly, is not completely true: is also for the people around us :)

One important lesson that I learned is to share some of the results of this review with some of the people around me.
If you start with the mindset that part of your review should be shared you may feel a bit uncomfortable and constraining your train of thoughts. But definitely sharing it is of great value.

Most of our goals and actions are possible only with the help of our friends and our peers: “us”

Do you remember the part 1 advices about feedback?

Sharing my review and expectations with the people around me created a great amount of new invaluable feedback!

I dismissed actions that were wrong, I received new ideas on new possible ways to solve a problem or getting near to a goal.
A new wider feedback loop started to strengthen: some of my expectations changed thanks to the feedback received.

In less than 1 month many small goals started happening thanks to my friends and my colleagues.
Something that initially I thought was very difficult to achieve became very easy with the support of a friend.
In another very particular situation something that I couldn’t even imagine happened because the person I spoke with was aware of my expectations.

Do you feel uncomfortable to share some of your expectations with your friend? Try to reconsider and ask yourself if is totally correct or right what you are trying to achieve.
Sometimes is also true that not everyone is ready to hear about your review. You cannot expect to receive a good feedback talking with a stranger you met in the street. Choose the people you want to speak to with attention, set a safe environment and context and always be honest with them!

Do you feel uncomfortable to have a difficult conversation with people around you on violated expectations or bad behaviour?
Again I’ve been very grateful for having red recently the book Crucial Confrontations by Patterson-Grenny-McMillan-Switzler where I found invaluable advices to help solving complex situations.

“Change will never happen fully until people know how to talk to one another”

Overall this has been a very positive experience that now other people around me are starting. And now is becoming equally fulfilling being on the other side helping some of my peers in finding some of the answers and feedback they need!

Are you happy that I shared this experience?
I would have not written this blog post if in my review actions there wasn’t “write a blog post about this review” and “find some peer pressure to write more”.
So thanks to my awesome colleague Andrew Maddison for being my official blog peer reviewer and putting some positive pressure :)

Last but not least rule of good feedback: don’t forget to say THANK YOU to the people around you!

…do you have any feedback? comments are welcome!

In the part 1 and 2 of this series I explained “why” and “how” you should run a personal review and its benefits. Now let’s see how you can use all the data that we have gathered!

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”
- Richard P. Feynman

Be honest with yourself and be ready to flip your mindset! Probably I’ve been lucky to watch this presentation of Linda Rising on “The power of Agile Mindset”.
The important lesson I learned is to be ready to recognise that you were wrong and you have done some mistakes! Correcting our own mistakes is the greatest learning point of a self-review.

The most important part of this personal review is about you and reflecting on yourself!
Now you have collected lot of data, you started thinking what you really value and what are your long term expectations: it’s time to create your actions plan!!

You want to contribute more? Start writing more blog posts, be more active in you communities, be ready to help your friends whenever they need you!
You want to learn photography? Choose a photography club in your area, choose and attend a photography course.
You want to eat more healthily? Start taking a log of your meals and setting some constraints to your diet.
You want to do more sport activity? Haven’t started yet your gym subscription?!? London marathon is next April!

Ehy! wait a minute! Don’t commit yourself to too many actions: is important that you do and give whatever you can without burning out!

One of the major changes that happened to myself during my review is the one of a mindset flip. Like many of us I’ve always felt very busy and with too many things to do wishing I had a 36hrs a day!
Don’t make my same mistake! Now you can look at “what really matters” and choose your priorities. Everyday now I don’t feel to busy anymore, but I’m feeling more positive and with a lot more of enthusiasm!

I’m still feeling that I’m probably doing too many things but with the conviction that is the right direction given the information I had at the moment of my choices.

“Intelligence is Diverse, Dynamic, Distinct”
- Sir Ken Robinson

…and the same is for your life and work. In your actions you must be specific and tight to you context and allow you to keep a good balance.
You can transform some of them in a TODO list to follow daily. Split big actions in smaller ones so that you can measure and accomplish something new every day.
If you want to learn more on how to create better actions read this short article on S.M.A.R.T. goals.

We tend to create new actions and adding something new to our behaviour to achieve a goal.
Sherlock Holmes in “Silver Blaze” solved a crime by deducing who was the criminal because “the dog did not bark”. Similarly is very easy to recognise that you should do something new, but is very difficult to acknowledge you should stop doing something or that something in a common situation is missing.

Finally acknowledge what you’ve already learned!
In the last year during my first two work projects I recognised that I had received almost constantly the same feedback from may colleagues. Recognising it and acknowledging that in my last few months I fixed it has been one of the most positive experiences that gave me a whole new injection of confidence.

So, what are you waiting for?!? It’s time to put your plan into action now!

In the part 1 of this series I explained “why” you should do a personal review and its benefits. In this post I will explain “how” I did it.

In Aimee Daniells’ 2011 review I liked the format inspired to agile’s retrospectives:

• set the stage,
• gather data,
• generate insights,
• decide what to do,
• close the retrospective.

But if you’re on your own (not working in a group) you may benefit from not following strictly this process, let your thoughts flow and start sketching ideas more freely.
I actually haven’t strictly followed the above process, but is important to recognise in which phase you are and group your data or ideas together using the above categories.
I used a mind map which slowly grew and evolved to the form in the picture below.

I started collecting data on the left side under “2011″ under the “work” label, in particular writing the feedback collected from my colleagues. Then while filling my “expectations” I realised that more thinking was needed around “What matters and I really value”.
At this point is where I realised that more data and information on the “life” side were needed and the review changed to a wider perspective.

This is only a simple example on how the process very roughly worked for me but I encourage you to follow your own flow.

What worked well during this review?

Was very important growing slowly and rearranging the mind map with new ideas: “No Big Design Up Front” ! :)
Continuously review your map and create association between the ideas you’re collecting to generate new insight and new ideas.

The process has been continuos for a couple of weeks: most of this process initially happened in a couple of evenings. Keeping Freemind always open in my laptop and collecting notes on a notebook on my bedside table contributed to add many other late thoughts.

Two parts have been influenced by a couple of books I have red.
To set my “expectations” I started using the method described in Rosamud and Bejamin Zander book “The Art of Possibilities”.
The method is called “Why I deserve an A”, is a method that Ben Zander used with the students in his music class. At the beginning of the school year his students were required to write a letter dated in the future (at the end of the school year) describing the reasons why they deserved an A.
Even if you’re not actually writing in a letter form, this exercise let you to focus on excellence and takes away the tension that harms accomplishment. But remember that what matters more is not the final accomplishment, but step along the learning path and the motivation do to your best to reach it.

And don’t forget that the greatest goals are not the selfish ones, but the ones that move your focus form “I” to “WE”.

Finding the right question is an important part both when you’re asking for feedback and to find the right inspiration for your self-review.
To answer the questions on “what I really value” I found very useful Katy Le May’s book “The Generosity Plan”.

What did you considered very positive or negative in the past? Why? and what are the underlying values?
What inspires us most? What work do you see truly making a difference?
Who are the people you admire most?
If you ran the world …fill in this blank…
What is broken and needs to be fixed?
What keeps you up an night?
and what gives you the motivation to get out of the bed in the morning?

Despite the details of this post I still think that is most important that you use your own tools. You should follow a natural process that is able to capture your train of thoughts across multiple days: follow again the principle “people more than processes and tools” :)

Soon I’ll publish the 3rd part I which I’ll try to share how you can use positively all the information that we gathered!

PS. maybe unrelated from this post topic, but you should absolutely watch this TED video from Ben Zander “on music and passion”!
It may be a good source of inspiration to think at your values and for setting your expectations :)