This is the first time I’ve gone on a cruise over the Christmas holiday. It was actually our 40th Anniversary Cruise, so we took the whole family along to celebrate.
Something I noticed is that being away makes you do things differently, since you’re not in familiar surroundings.
But it also made me use a “blank sheet” process, whereby you have a blank piece of paper and just start recording your thoughts.
You don’t want to look at lists of what you need to do or past projects you’ve accomplished. You want to do it as if you’re all new at what you’re doing.
Now before you dismiss this process (because it involved going on a cruise and you’re not planning one) know that you can also do the process by going somewhere different for a few hours— maybe a neighboring city so that you feel like you are somewhere else than where you typically go.
Note: Do NOT do this in your office. You will tend to think in the same way you always think, since you are normally there day after day.
You want a fresh place and to use your “fresh eyes” so that you can plan an awesome year.
What to Do with Your Blank Sheets of Paper
- Get plenty of blank sheets of paper so that after you start the process you don’t have to take a break.
- Start writing down the ideas that come into your head.
- Don’t worry about the order you’re thinking of them in.
- You may want to think about life in general first.
- Next, think about your career.
- After you write all the ideas down (keep going until you fully exhaust your thoughts for the day) highlight all the ones that you could act on this coming year.
- Fine tune each idea so that it is an action step.
- You can group your ideas by month, if you wish, so that you can pull from this list all year long.