Working out loud: The first week of my 12 week year

This is the second week of the 60 days PKM-course of Harold Jarche that I participate in and one of the assignments is to ‘work out loud’: “describing what you are doing, what you are going to do, what you have done, and any problems you are encountering.”

I see some people online, doing this just so easily (at least it seems that way) and I really see value in this. It is one of the reasons why I participated in this course.

So, what am I doing these days?

12 Week Year

12weekyear

I just started my first 12 week year, which is a 12 week plan around a few very important goals, which are brought down to weekly action plans and daily action plans.

I found out that I planned WAY TOO MANY tasks of my 12 week plan in this first week.
This happened for two reasons:

  1. Usually the number would have been ok, but this week I had to spend much more time on other ‘urgent and important’ tasks, just because I procrastinated on them in the previous weeks. But this week they became urgent and then they usually get done (if they are important enough).This is also one reason why I think the 12 week year could work for me. When I set goals at the beginning of the year, I think I have the whole year to get to these goals. With a 12 week plan, I have to do them in just 12 weeks. (Maybe I have to think about a 12 days year 😀 … )
  2. A few tasks were not broken down into small enough pieces. If I’d had broken them down into smaller tasks I would have known that I would never be able to do them all this week.

Both remarks are important for future planning:

  1. I have to take into account what other things I have to do that cannot be shifted to next week.
  2. I should describe really actionable tasks instead of small projects. Breaking down tasks into smaller pieces will help me do them more easily too.

Working out loud

So, how did this first attempt of ‘Working out loud’ go? I think I’m experiencing quite the same as other participants and participants from previous versions of the PKM-course:

By writing things down, explaining them and sharing them with others, I got more clarity. I even created two clear actions for my next planning session.

One topic at a time

One important thing to take into account is that I should just pick one of the things that I did and really try to create a learning point from that. Working out loud might soon become a long story where I just ramble on about all the things that I encountered. This will not only be a very poor read for others, but it will also prevent me from having real clarity about one topic.

By picking just one topic now I could define some goog action points that might also work for others.

If I really want to discuss other topics too, I should probably do that in a different blog post, which can of course be posted that very same day 🙂

 

 

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