I applaud anyone who wants to improve their health, finances, or relationships. If now is the time, awesome! But please don’t make another empty resolution—try a PYR this year!
Spend an hour with a notepad, pen, and your favorite contemplative vice reviewing the past year. You know, a glass of wine or a cigar. The notion of a Past Year Review or PYR can be learned from Tim’s original blog here. We implemented Tim Ferriss’ idea last year.
The PYR is simple. 5 steps where you review the year by looking at your weekly calendar and dividing the people with whom you engaged, activities, events, and commitments into positive or negative outcomes. Tim’s PYR is designed to make sure your life is moving you in the direction of your goals or happiness in general. The 5-Steps are in this link.
I believe the PYR can be done for multiple areas of your life to help you set the habits, and identify the areas your actions are not congruent with your objectives. You will avoid creating empty resolutions.
At HELIX we are focused on creating high-performing sales organizations for growth-minded CEOs. So, the approach we took at the end of 2019 was how we spent our professional time during the year, and did those people/events/activities yield positive results.
When you shine a light on your calendar you cannot hide from the truth.
The PYR helped HELIX increase our business 117% in 2020 despite a pandemic in a State with a Governor who shut down the economy. HELIX went into the year with clarity on what we needed to STOP doing, and refocus our energy. You can apply this process to other areas of your life: health, finance, family, community just to name a few.
Here are the big takeaways on how the evaluation of how spent our time allowed us significant growth during a challenging year.
- Not all prospecting activities have the same ROI. Your unique PYR will help you understand what activities spin off the best results. If you spend more time on these types of activities, your ROI on the time should increase.
- We applied the same process to internal meetings as we do meetings with clients and prospects. An Up-Front Agreement on time, agenda, and decisions for next steps. We cut internal meeting time by 57% with greater efficiency.
- Business Development time is pre-blocked into our calendars per week on a rolling 3-month basis. We color code our calendar based on activity type and ensure the lifeblood of our revenue growth is protected.
- A big change was to schedule 30-minutes each week to shut off technology and reflect on mindset. This could be time to reflect on an issue, or just take a walk for a quick re-boot. We protected this respite for the mind, and it was a small oasis from constant demands on our time.
If you manage a sales team, an entire organization, or just your own time, invest an hour during the next few days in a Previous Year Review; besides our process involves a glass of wine and or cigar!
Happy New Year!
