Out of sight, out of mind
and week 14/11/2024 review
A new week with The Ignorant, your Weekly Companion in the Pursuit of High Performance and Growth, one step at a time.
This week I’ll talk about how I overestimate my ability to remember things.
Intro
Some brief and general thoughts.
Verba Volant
I consider myself a smart guy. Not in an arrogant way — just that I think I’m good at grasping things quickly. Ironically, this may be my dumbest trait.
If you're anything like me, you probably overestimate your ability to remember things. Imagine you’re lost in a new city and need directions because your phone's dead. You ask someone for help, and they start to explain. "Got it, no need to write it down," you say confidently. And yet, five minutes later, you’re back to square one.
On a larger scale, we’re hit with more information than ever before in history. On top of that, our brain is producing thousands of thoughts per hour. It’s impossible to track it all — and our personal lives are no exception. We are distracted.
If you’ve been following along over the past weeks, you may have set some goals for yourself. Quick test: What are these goals? How long did it take you to remember them? Now, how easily do you think you’ll be able to recall them in 3, 6, or 9 months?
The solution: write them down and put them where you’ll see them every day. This way, you won’t miss the big picture while getting caught up in details. Think of it as looking at the moon, not just the finger pointing toward it.
How I visualize my goals
Some people use Post-its on their mirrors. Makes sense — you check the mirror every morning anyway, so it’s an easy way to remind yourself.
Not me. I like to live a bit more on the edge.
Jokes aside, find that one thing you stare at every day and cover it with your goals. Literally speaking. Make it hard for you to ignore them.
For me, it’s my laptop. I customized my desktop background so that every time I open it, my goals are right there, impossible to overlook.
That being said, let’s dive into what happened this week.
Performance Review
This is where I’ll be honest. I’ll analyze my goal-reaching performance each week and month and see where I made mistakes and why, and what challenges I faced.
Last week: Actual vs Planned
This week has been filled with many unexpected events (both positive and negative), causing big shifts in my priorities throughout the week. The only things I made paramount are, again, my non-negotiables. I’m glad I stick to them because they generated some relief. The only thing I can control when these black swans happen is my reaction to them. This has been entirely reflected in my goals performance.
Last week: Goals performance
My week ends each Thursday - the moment when I sit to write this newsletter.
Missed goal 1 - Reason: Due to current positive financial market conditions, I prioritized other short-term revenue-generating approaches. This will change once the market stabilizes.
Missed goal 2 - Reason: I overestimated my ability to find referrers to each position and their responsiveness. Need to implement these learning to next goals (same goal iterated for next week).
I have a success rate on these goal of 60% (# of Tasks done / # of planned tasks)
Missed goal 3 - Reason: Due to bureaucratic issues. After prompting on a daily basis, I can safely say that it does not depend on me.
Last week: The Challenges I faced
I found it hard to come up with names of friends, acquaintances, and connections to contact if I don’t prepare them in advance. Improvement: I built a Personal CRM (database with all personal info, will share it here later on) to keep track of all the people I care about.
Journaling and meditation are still giving me a hard time. Genuinely thinking about dropping them completely for the time being. Let me know what you think about it.
Next Week: Goals
Each of these has a deadline being Thursday the 21th @ 20:00.
And I need to pay the debt of the goals I didn’t reach this week:
Schedule doctor checkups
Finish referrers and CV
Research client
Next week I will assess what happened, the good things, and the challenges I faced.
Next Week: How it’ll look like
Next week, I will show how the week actually turned out to be and how much it differed from what I planned beforehand.
Mini Challenge
How did you go last week? Here’s my weekly average:
Again, 2 hours short of spending 1 full day staring at the phone BUT I have decreased the time spent on social media by 1h and substituted it with information & reading.
Want to participate? Post your most recent full weekly average - and run 3km if you spent more than a day using your phone.
Submit your results in the comments.
Thank you for reading this far, I hope I showed you interesting content for your personal productivity.
Whether you’re looking to improve your productivity, reach your own ambitious goals, or simply find inspiration in someone else’s journey, The Ignorant is here to offer something fresh, practical, and motivating every single week.
If you simply don’t care
If you are not interested in productivity-related subjects but still feel like reading a good story written in my native language, consider subscribing to my second newsletter, Tales of an Ignorant, where I talk about Myths, Legends, Heroes, and all the wild stuff that got us here — told like I’m just filling you in on last night’s story