Alfredtricks Weekly#3 : "Christmas time" edition.

Paris. Sunday 20th, 2020. 12 am. 

A friendly and productive “Bonjour”, a French version for “Hi”, from (still) cold and (finally) sunny Paris 🥐🥖☕ !

Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the second issue of Alfredtricks Weekly, your weekly dose of Alfred that makes you more productive!

While any Alfred user would take advantage of reading this newsletter, you will definitely make the most of this newsletter if you have the Alfred Powerpack already installed on your Mac. You can get more information about the Alfred Powerpack here.

As this is a special time of the year time, and after what we all have been through this year, we certainly more than ever before want to take a little bit of time to reflect and start planning 2021, so we make it our year whatever happens. Even a global pandemic.

New year’s goals are, for better or worse, called “resolutions” and often considered as useless as they do not last more than just a few days or weeks.

Let’s try to make it different this year! I have a few resources for you to read.

First, let’s start with an annual review. How to improve yourself if your do not have a clear view of what you need to improve, right? Jason Shen in this article share his approach on how you can write an annual review. I like his simple approach and the fact he added further readings to read.

Second, you will enjoy this article from Justin Miller of Lifehack.org, especially if you are not really into resolutions, as she advises to replace goals/resolutions with promises. As failed promises to yourself do create a bigger feeling of guilt than failed goals/resolutions, promises might be a better tool to help you achieve your goals/resolutions as you really do not want to feel that feeling of guilt.

Annual review, done. Promises written down. Now what? Third step! New Year’s resolution do often require more than just a few days, weeks to achieve them. So, let’s divide the new year in four chunks of 90 days. Laura Vanderkam in her Fast Company article explains why this technique will help you increase your success rate in achieving your goals/resolutions.

While the author advises “Don’t spread yourself thin” meaning you can focus on few goals/resolutions at the same time during a 90 days chunk, from experience, I would say the lesser goals/resolutions you are working on at the same time the better. Why? Because, as too many people, one can be temped to only rely on our motivation to achieve our new goals/resolutions.

As any wave, motivation comes and goes away.

Then, how will you achieve what you are trying to achieve if your only tool, that is motivation, is gone? Even if you replace motivation with a way more powerful tool because it doesn’t go away (i.e discipline), you still will have many reasons (work reasons, health reasons, family reasons…) to not achieve or partially achieve your goals/resolutions.

That‘s why I believe the annual review is so important. Not only because it helps you clearly see where you are now, where you want to go to and precisely define what you absolutely have to do (goals/resolutions) in order to get there.

When the why is clear, the how is clearer.

Anyone can have 100’s goals/resolutions. What matters is, who, at the end of the year 2021, will have achieve all his/her goals/resolutions. I bet you these are those who have just a few as they are really meaningful to those who sat them.

Now, to make sure you achieve your goals/resolutions, here is the step four called “Have a plan”.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

How to make such a plan? Reading Ruby Shi article is a definitely of a great help. Detailed and straightforward while I would skip the support system part as I would consider it as a nice to have not a must-have as so many people, now famous as “they made it in life”, didn’t have any support system when they started.

And how can Alfred help me with all this? Answers in the next issue of Alfredtricks Weekly !

Happy reading, reflecting time, family time !

Thank you!

Until next week, have a productive one!

François-Albert.