An old fish swims by two young fish and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?”
After he passes by, one young fish looks at the other and says, “What the heck is water?”
The joke points to an important truth: we rarely notice what’s closest to us. The traits we have that are most obvious to others are often invisible to us. Not because they’re hard to spot, but because we are immersed in them at all times.
Insight is difficult. We fail to notice patterns. We react to events, rather than reflecting on them. We stay stuck too long in jobs, relationships—even identities—that no longer serve us.
But, every once in awhile, we gain perspective. We manage to see the water we swim in and get a chance to change course. Those moments of perspective are typically rare, something that may occur only a handful of times in ordinary life, while we’re so busy swimming.
While working on Foundations [1], I chose Reflection [2] as one of the twelve, month-long focuses. The purpose was to actively cultivate the perspective that helps us see the waters we swim in. Were I doing this project over from scratch, one book I would definitely include is Tiago Forte’s most recent book, Life in Perspective [3].
Annual Reviews: Less Analysis, More Feeling
When Tiago first mentioned he was working on this book, I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it. A book about doing annual reviews sounds about as exciting as a book about filing taxes. I had imagined the book would be full of analytical steps for going through notes and summarizing goals, a kind of high-level planning seminar for the most left-brained possible person.
I was pleasantly surprised to find the book is much more directed toward the problem I posed at the start: how do we generate insights into life? And is there a way to make this sort of reflection a regular practice rather than a haphazard occurrence?
The method Forte suggests relies on giving yourself space to really connect with how you feel about your life—your past, your present and your plans for the future—rather than trying to crunch a bunch of numbers in a spreadsheet.
My Takeaways from the Book
I haven’t been in a habit of doing annual reviews the way Forte does. But I have done public reviews of my life on my blog for the last twenty years, and I’ve written thousands of pages of journal entries over the years.
Still, I found a number of Forte’s points really struck home as he brought attention to many of the ways my own reflective practices often flounder:
- I’m too problem oriented. My journal entries are, almost without exception, written from a problem-solving mindset. There’s an obstacle, and I spend my time thinking about how to overcome it. But you can’t reach a destination if you don’t really understand where you are now. Too often, my rush to solve problems neglects really connecting with where I am and where I’ve been.
- I’m too self-critical. Forte writes about how his early annual reviews were full of self-reprobation about his insufficiencies and failures. I had to cringe a bit when reading it, because mine often are too. Indeed, a major realization I had while reading the book was that I often use tough-mindedness and self-criticism as a way to clamp down on fears of uncertainty or failure.
- I don’t take enough time to really think. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Forte’s latest book was simply that Forte does so much reflection on an annual timescale. When I designed the keystone habit for Reflection in Foundations, I focused on a daily journaling habit—modeled much after the semi-regular writing habit I use to help myself think better. But longer sessions, done less frequently, may be necessary to get the kind of broader perspective that can otherwise be missing.
Forte’s other book, Building a Second Brain [4], has become a classic in the field of personal knowledge management. I fully expect Life In Perspective [3] will become another classic for those wanting to better see the waters in which they swim.