What the heck is a Retro168?
The 168 part comes from 24 hours X 7 days = 168 hours.
The Retro part is from the word Retrospective which means looking back. Looking back HARD and being honest.
Last week, you had 168 hours to win. How many wins did you get?
Do you even know what you really did last week?
The Retro 168 is a timeless exercise that I have been teaching to folks for many years. It is FREAKING HARD to do for so many reasons. The biggest reason is that it is absolutely SOUL CRUSHING. Folks know deep down inside that they did absolutely nothing to move the ball forward in their lives. Living is continuous loop of lies and excuses. My kid did this, my boss that, the big game, the house burned down. Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.
But it is okay, next week will be better. Things will change. I just know it in my bones.
Well it is going to change right now.
Here is a link to a Excel Spreadsheet, Apple Keynote or a Adobe PDF you can print out right now and get started.
24 Hours in the Day
We all know there is 24 hours in the day. Let’s start with Sunday. What did you do with those 24 hours?
Staring from midnight, it might look something like this::
6 hours Sleeping
2 hours screwing around with coffee, news, breakfast,
3 hours at Church catching up on sleep
2 hours at the Waffle House
4 hours watching sports, drinking beer and wishing you didn’t eat at Waffle House
2 hours with the dinner
3 hours on the internet, social media, more television
Last 2 hours sleeping
A prefect Sunday right?
Now repeat this for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc… until you have a full inventory of where all your time went last week. Including the you forgot.
Now the Hard Part.
Go back and grab your vision board, if you have one. How many hours of the 168 hours that was given to you was spent getting you closer to anything on the vision board?
For most folks, the honest answer is ZERO.
Others will try to say, but I worked my job, did a bunch of OT. Which is fair if you have an awesome job that is taking you places and making a pile of cash. Double down on that job and push forward to be better. Especially if it will get you everything on that vision board and then some. Remember that vision board is going to change.
For those that have done this exercise a couple times, it is maybe one or two hours. 2 divided by 168 equals 1% effort. For most 1% is maximum effort.
Now look across that Retro168, how many hours were on social media? Hanging out with buddies? Watching television?
Even on the more serious stuff like family. How much of those hours spent was quality time? Not bullshit quality time, but like real quality time. Going to the lake and teaching the kids for fish or wake surf. Going to a MonsterJam. Or was it just hanging out watching television…pretending it was quality time…but you know deep down you were being lazy.
The big question is…Where can you cut 10 or 20 hours out of that 168 you were given to focus on personal development?
Do you REALLY need to debate stupid crap of Facebook? Do you really need to binge watch a 6 season television show? Will that television show or social media debate bring you closer to your goals?
If you don’t see something wrong when looking at your Retro168. Don’t see the opportunity to invest. If you think that all this free time is far more important that hitting you personal goals. Well, this isn’t for you. Stop reading now.
Rinse and Repeat.
The most successful sales company I was ever part of had this this Sunday/Monday ritual. On Sunday they prepared for the “Come to Jesus” call on Monday morning. For sales guys, it is a simple metric that they measure themselves by…their quota. On Monday morning at 8AM they get on a conference call with their boss and and peers. they say something like this…
“last week I promised $1.5M to be closed and I closed $1.8M last week, this week I promise to deliver $1.2M”
Each sales guy rattles off the same thing, until…
“last week I promised $2.2M to be closed and I closed $1.9M, this week I promise to deliver my $2.1M forecasted, plus that extra $300K that I missed last week”
The sales manager tallies it up, they might ask a simple question why they missed it. There will be as simple answer and they move on. ZERO Excuses. At 9AM, the managers called the region directors and repeat the tallies. At 10AM, the regional directors reported their tallies to the VPs. By noon, the CEO had very good numbers on how the company is doing. Very simple, very effective process. Everyone knew the game and played by the rules of the game. The exit door was simple too, six weeks of missed quota and you were out of the most lucrative sales gig on the planet.
The company was Cisco Systems, one of the legendary tech giants. But it wasn’t a tech company, it was a sales company filled with highly disciplined sales sharks focused on killing. I have many friends now, in their 40s that are retired with tens of millions in deferred comp accounts, living in amazing places and doing amazing things. Like I said before, if you have something that will get you your vision board. Double down on that and kill it.
The Retro 168 drives that kind of discipline and gets you those kinds of results you want to achieve. Every Sunday night, you look back at your time quota. Figure out what you did to hit your weekly goals or not. Be honest with yourself and make the corrections required. To be completely frank, it typically takes 6-12 weeks of Retro168s before you can truly change the course of your life. 99% of the people quit in the second week.
Hopefully this made sense. We will talk about Retro168 more in later articles.
Win in Life!
-Mark