Now, this is going to be really hard. Impossibly hard. Not hard from the task itself, as it only takes minutes to complete it. The hard part is being genuinely honest with yourself when you do it. That graphic of a person smiling is what I aspire to be, not the reality of who I am when I do my own retros.
Basically, the exercise is something you do at the end of the week. Hence the “Retro“ which is short for retrospective. Which is a fancy word of recalling everything you did and understanding what you did to win (or lose). The 168 comes from simple math. There is 24 hours in a day and you had 7 days last week. 7 times 24 is 168. Which is 168 chances to win. It looks something like this:
The hard part is going hour-by-hour, day by day, and writing down what you did with your time. Working, drinking, watching Netflix, hanging out with your family, whatever. This starts to paint an honest picture of how you are investing your biggest asset, your time.
Now most people’s retrospective when using a spreadsheet will start to look like this:
In 24 hours, they spent the minimum viable amount of time working (blue) and the maximum amount of time not being productive (red). The really honest folks will actually type into the spreadsheet what they did for the block of time. Others that don’t have access to a spreadsheet will simply write it out in a notebook, like this:
But I am always so tired!
Some of what you do is critical. Family time is critical. Some things are impossible to get around, like working your day job. Others are not so critical, like watching Netflix or surfing social media. You might say, but I need that time to unwind, just like you think you need that drink. Others say they are so tired. But those are the “stories” you are telling yourself, the traps that society has set up to keep you from getting those things on your vision board. To keep you down. So you gotta ask yourself, how important is that activity? Do you really need 4:45-8:00 for Dinner and home tasks? How much of that time was unproductive?
Not to mention your phone probably gives you constant reminders like this:
6 hours a day which is 42 hours in a week spent on a mobile phone doing exactly what?
The goal of a Retro168 is to get you to think about your time as a resource and plan your week out. Here is a sample of someone’s time planning.
This person has allocated 80 hours a week to win. Balancing out personal needs like exercise, learning, and fun time in their schedule. They didn’t prioritize boozing with buddies on Friday night as they would rather have a guilt-free Saturday at the lake. Sunday for them is a workday; no they are not religious. From here, they fill their time with tasks and activities that enable them to win. I will go deeper in later posts on this subject.
To Summarize
By spending the 10 minutes writing down what you did, it starts introducing personal honesty and time management into your life. Now some of you will say, “I don’t want to do that” or “it’s a waste of time” but those billionaires you love to hate like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates has their time planned down to 10 min chunks. Their Retro 168 is more like a Retro 1008. They have 840 more chances to win than you do. And you wonder why they are billionaires and you are not.