8,760 HOURShow to get the most out of next yearalexvermeer.com/8760hoursVersion 2 8,760 HOURS | 2This guide is free and does not contain any affiliate links. Share it with anyone you think would find it useful.It falls under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/Content by Alex Vermeer. Design and layout by Jimmy Rintjema.This is version 2 of this guide.Disclaimer: This guide does not contain legal, medical, or any other type of advice. Please be safe and responsible!8,760 HOURShow to get the most out of next year 8,760 HOURS | 3TABLE OF CONTENTSINTRODUCTION .......................................... 4W!" #$%& %' %$$? ......................................................... 4Y()* $+,- +& % &)'.!-$$ (“$+,- +. .!(*'”) ............. 5T!- #*(/$-0 1+'! &-1 "-%*’. *-.($)'+(&........ 5H(1 '( ).- '!+. 2)+3- ............................................... 5W!( '!+. +. ,(* ............................................................ 6A 4)+56 #-*.(&%$ +&'*(3)5'+(& ........................... 6I THE TOOLS ................................................ 8A &('- (& 0+&3 0%##+&2 ........................................... 8T!- T1-$7- L+,- %*-%. ................................................ 9II A SNAPSHOT OF YOUR LIFE ..............11T!- +&+'+%$ (7-*7+-1 ...................................................11G-''+&2 .#-5+,+5: "()* #*-.-&' *-%$+'" ..............11III THE NEXT 8,760 HOURS ....................16Y()* +3-%$ ,)')*-......................................................16T!- &-8' 8,760 !()*. ...............................................16Y()* 0%9(* 2(%$. ..................................................... 17IV OPTIMIZING FOR SUCCESS .............19T!- #*(5*%.'+&%'+(& -4)%'+(& .............................19B)+$3+&2 (& '!- 0%9(* 2(%$. ...............................19Y-%*$" 5%$-&3%*........................................................20O&2(+&2 *-7+-1........................................................20P*+(*+'+:+&2 ...................................................................21RESOURCES AND THANKS ................. 22I, "() ,()&3 '!+. ).-,)$... ....................................22A56&(1$-32-0-&'. .................................................22A33+'+(&%$ *-.()*5-..............................................22V-*.+(& 2 ......................................................................22F--3/%56 ......................................................................22 8,760 HOURS | 4INTRODUCTIONThis is a guide for plan-ning the next 8,760hours—one full year—ofyour life. More import-antly, it is about creating adetailed plan and optimiz-ing for success, based onan understanding of whatworks.For the last few years this system hasworked very well for me. My hope is thatyou will find it useful as well.Many of the ideas here are not original tome. This guide builds off many hours ofreading many articles and blogs about pro-ductivity, goals, and the brain, which are at-tributed when possible.1The end result is a system for keeping your-self constantly moving towards your goalsover the next year, and constantly stayingon track.1 A big early influencers is Chris Guillebeau who haswritten about his yearly planning process.WHY PLAN AT ALL?Want to learn an instrument? Want towrite a book? Want to beat every computergame ever designed? Want to cure can-cer? Want to have a positive impact on theworld and an impactful career? Do you havesomething to protect, something that getsyou out of bed in the morning?Whatever your primary motivations are inlife, you won’t get anywhere by waiting forsomething to happen. We plan because wehave sh*t we want to do with our lives.Humans do not think strategically by de-fault. Even when we know what our goalsare—and we often don’t—we are still bad atasking things like:➙ What exactly do I want to achieve?➙ How will I measure success?➙ Am I actively seeking out informationabout this?➙ Can I break this down into more man-ageable parts?➙ Is this really my goal? Am I con-strained by fears or uncertainties?“NEVER PUTOFF TILLTOMORROWWHAT YOUCAN DO THEDAY AFTERTOMORROW.”MARK TWAIN 8,760 HOURS | 5Our brains are not optimized for achievingour larger goals in life. They are sculpted byevolution for survival and reproductive abil-ities, but not much else!We need systems and processes in place tohelp us get around these evolutionary “abil-ities” so that we can get the most out of ourlives.YOUR LIFE IN A NUTSHELL!“LIFE IS SHORT”"If you live to be 80 years old, which is aboutthe first-world average life expectancy, thenyou will experience about 30,000 days or700,000 hours of life (if we take out sleepingtime the number drops to more like 450,000hours).2The point is that we have limited time andwe must choose how to spend it. Unfortu-nately, from personal experience, I rarelytake the time to consciously do this.The only way to decide what to work on isto prioritize. That’s why I take a big pictureapproach to life and break down the big pic-ture into present year and day actions.This is part of my motivation for calling this2 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy.I, for one, plan to live to be at least 1,000 years old, butthat’s a story for a different guide.guide “8,760 hours” rather than “one year.”Even if there is a sense that life is incrediblyshort, there are still 8,760 hours in a singleyear! That is a lot of time to get some realstuff done.Given that our natural life-planning skillsare… lacking, this guide hopes to help usovercome that limitation and get thingsdone anyway.We need specific goals and a concrete planfor obtaining them that is optimized forsuccess. We need a clear picture of our livesand where our priorities lie. What bettertime to do some fresh planning than at thestart of a new year?THE PROBLEM WITH NEWYEAR’S RESOLUTIONSWe've all made them and we've all failedto achieve them. The number of times I'veresolved to take up regular exercise or stopprocrastinating—and failed miserably—isembarrassing.New Year’s resolutions often have at leastone of the following problems:➙ They are vague, non-specific goals like“be fit,” “be nice to people,” or “readmore books.”➙ They are overly pessimistic and stemfrom self-critical admonitions for stillnot doing That Thing you alwayswanted to do or felt you ought to do—“I’m such a slacker, but this year willbe different.”➙ They take on too much at once—“I’mcommitting to these ten big, vague,life-changing things and start them allon January 1st.”➙ They are not really your highest pri-orities, and they inevitably fall to thewayside.This guide outlines my process for avoid-ing all of these shortcomings and trying tomake some real changes over the next year.The start of a new year is useful. Theretends to be a positive “change can happen!”atmosphere that explains why people maketheir new year’s resolutions in the firstplace. A new year. A clean slate. A time tomake some changes. Let’s still do that, butlet’s do it right.HOW TO USE THIS GUIDEI’m going to illustrate what it is that I do,and I invite you to follow along.First I do an initial overview of my life. Thishelps get the mind ready to do the wholeprocess and starts me thinking about what 8,760 HOURS | 6I’m doing with my life, where my prioritiesare, what I want—in general, and roughlyover the next year.Next I review, in detail, the state of allareas of my life, and specifically any majorprojects completed in the past year or stillunderway.Then I spend some time thinking about theideal future—how I want my life to look.Finally I extract from my ideals what I wantto focus on for the next 8,760 hours (1 year)of my life, and optimize those plans forsuccess by taking advantage of several mo-tivation and anti-procrastination tools andtricks.I try to spend at least a few days using thisprocess at the end of every calendar year.The more time you spend on it the morevalue you will likely get out of it. Also,spreading it over several days gives themind lots of time to process what it’s think-ing about, which I find useful.Before we get started, I will mention whatthis guide is not for:➙ Determining what your bigger goalsin life should be—this is something Ican’t get into here, and something Ihighly recommend you spend sometime thinking about if you haven’t al-ready.➙ An excuse when things don’t workout. “But I tried. I even used thisguide!” You are responsible for yourlife; if things don’t work out then fig-ure out why and do something aboutit.The number one way to use this guidewrong is to be dishonest with yourself,whether intentionally or accidentally. Youneed to be willing to face yourself, dirt andall. If you’re not up for that, then file thisguide away and continue on with life as yousee fit.WHO THIS IS FORI’m very analytic, and this guide strongly re-flects that. In the process of reviewing mypast year and planning the upcoming yearI break down my life into a bunch of areas,repeatedly mind map my goals and pro-jects in great detail, develop ways to trackmy progress, and try to optimize my life forsuccess.The whole process is very analytical andsystematic, and won’t work for everybody.There is some risk with trying to optimizeother peoples’ lives, because we don't allwork the same. People are complex. Thisprocess, which I enjoy, might be unpleasantfor you.But even if you find specific parts of thisguide useless, I believe you can still get somevalue out of it.A large part of the reason this works for meis because I enjoy using it. If you don’t likeusing your system then it will not survivefor long. If at any point there is a part of theprocess that you do not want to do or wouldlike to modify, then please do.No matter what, do what works for you. Thewhole point of this process is to help youget the most out of the next year. As youfollow or deviate from this process, don’tforget the reason why you’re reading this inthe first placeA QUICK PERSONALINTRODUCTIONFor the purposes of this guide it is sufficientto say that I enjoy reading and thinkingabout various topics ranging from under-standing how our minds work, thinkingclearly, improving productivity and organ-ization, maximizing my positive impact onthe world, learning cool things, resolvinginternal conflicts, and generally improvingmy life as much as possible.Life is short, and I’ll be damned if I don’t at 8,760 HOURS | 7least try to make the most of it.Planning out my year and optimizing it for success are natural actions in the pursuit of myinterests.If you want to know more, the best place is on my website (alexvermeer.com), which has abunch of info on how I run my life, what major projects I’m working on, and what I’m cur-rently reading, among other things.repetition intensityi iexeYogi 8,760 HOURS | 8I THE TOOLSBefore we go ahead and doany life planning we needsome tools to help us out.The process outlined in this guide is flex-ible. You can easily adapt it to use whatevertools you prefer. I always require the fol-lowing:➙ Pen and notebook➙ Privacy➙ Time➙ Mind mapping software (optional)If at any point in this guide you would rath-er use a different set of tools—such as paperand pen rather than mind mapping soft-ware—then do it!A NOTE ON MIND MAPPINGMind mapping consists of starting with acentral idea in the middle of the page andbranching out ideas from there. For ex-ample, the following two figures are of anearly pen and paper mind map I made whenoutlining this guide and my review mindmap from last year, respectively.For things like outlining, big picture think-ing, and connecting ideas, mind mapping isvastly superior to linear note taking, wheth-er it’s with pen and paper or a software onyour computer.Paper has the benefits of flexibility andcreativity, whereas software has the bene-fits of any electronic tool—mobility, copy-ing and pasting, printing, resizing, easyscaling, etc.Some mind mapping software options are:➙ Mindmanager by Mindjet—expensivebut powerful. (This is my current pro-gram of choice, though I have somereservations.3)➙ FreeMind—open source and free.➙ MindMeister—free and online.You must also be sure you will have enoughtime. As mentioned in the introduction, I3 Specifically, when I switched from Windows to OSXI discovered that the Mac version of Mindmanager is notas good as for Windows. Some key features I enjoyedusing were missing, and it is all-around more buggy. Stillpowerful, but less good.Figure 1: A sample paper & pen mindmapFigure 2: A sample Mindmanagermind map 8,760 HOURS | 9stretch out this process over at least a fewdays to get the most out of it.THE TWELVE LIFE AREASOne last thing before we get to the corecontent of this guide.Just as an airplane has wings, engines, win-dows, controls, and landing gear, your lifehas various components. Ignoring some ofthem is like trying to fly without wings.There are many ways to break down yourlife into different “buckets.” Over time Ihave collected and combined various meth-ods and currently use twelve categories.4V%$)-. & P)*#(.-Your deeper, underlying, fundamental val-ues and wants. Your philosophy of life. Yoursense of purpose, vision, and meaning.C(&'*+/)'+(& & I0#%5'How you give value to the world, make adifference, and have a positive impact.L(5%'+(& & T%&2+/$-.Your physical presence in the world. Whereyou are in the world. Your living situation.Your stuff. What you own and why. Yourmaterial sufficiency. Your mobility.4 I keep an up-to-date list of these categories at https://alexvermeer.com/life-areas/.M(&-" & F+&%&5-.Your savings, investments, assets, and debt.How your money is organization and man-aged. Your inflows, budgets, and outflows.C%*--* & W(*6Your work, job, career, and business. Yourposition, title, role, and responsibilities.Your source of income.H-%$'! & F+'&-..Your eating habits, diet, exercise habits, andactivity levels. How resilient you are to sick-ness. Your overall energy level. Your sleep-ing patterns and quality. Your major healthissues and susceptibilities.E3)5%'+(& & S6+$$ D-7-$(#0-&'Your learning, education, and mental de-velopment. Your talents and skills. Yourskill development, practicing, and training.S(5+%$ L+,- & R-$%'+(&.!+#.The intimate relationship(s) you have orwant to have. The quality of your relation-ships. Your home life and relationships withfamily members. Your friend circles andsocial experiences. Your club, organization,and community memberships.E0('+(&. & W-$$-B-+&2Your general feeling about life, optimismor pessimism, positivity or negativity. Youremotional intelligence. Your subjectivewell-being, self-esteem, self-respect, andself-compassion.C!%*%5'-* & I3-&'+'"Your identity and model of yourself. Yourstrengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices.Your intelligence, integrity, honesty, cour-age, compassion, honor, self-discipline, andso on.P*(3)5'+7+'" & O*2%&+:%'+(&Your memorized solutions, daily routine,schedule, effectiveness, organization, andproductivity. Your setup, systems, process-es, tools, and techniques.A37-&')*- & C*-%'+7+'"Your hobbies, pastimes, and things you dofor fun and adventure. Your creativity andits expression.v v vYes, twelve is a lot of categories. Some ofyou may prefer a different breakdown.5Whatever categories you choose to use, the5 For example, Chris Guillebeau's categories or theones Steve Pavlina uses in his book: Habits & DailyRoutine, Career & work, Money & finances, Health &fitness, Mental development and education, Social life& relationships, Home & family, Emotions, Character& integrity, Life purpose & contribution, Spiritualdevelopment. 8,760 HOURS | 10rest of the guide should be easily adaptable to suit.Note that certain aspects of your life will naturally overlap between the categories above.For example, rock climbing has elements of Social (it is quite communal), Character (facingfears), Fitness (makes you stronger), and Adventure (because it’s fun!).For me, I climb because of how much fun it is, but I think of climbing as primarily great formy mental and physical health, so I classify it under Health & Fitness. This overlap is perfectlyokay.v v vNow that we have the tools we can begin the actual review and planning. 8,760 HOURS | 11II A SNAPSHOT OF YOUR LIFENow that we have the necessary tools inour toolbox, it's time to build a detailedpicture of our life as it currently stands.THE INITIAL OVERVIEWPull out that pen and paper. To start, you want to get the brainthinking about this stuff by answering the following questionsabout the past year:1. What went well?2. What did not go well?3. Where did you try hard?4. Where did you not try hard enough?You also want to ask the following questions about right now:➙ What is the current situation here?➙ How do things stand right now?➙ How would I summarize to a friend the status of this area?You don't need to get into thorough detail yet, as that comes later.I spend at least a few minutes brainstorming (using mind maps)answers to each of these questions. Once I have around ten itemsI move on—they key here isn’t to find 10 things, but to get all the“obvious” things out of your head, and quickly.GETTING SPECIFIC: YOUR PRESENTREALITYNow it's time to dive deep. For each of the areas we will map outa complete “status report” that includes an assessment of that areaand any relevant information or metrics.For example, for Career & Work I assess my current career, mystanding within the company, my options, and my passion forwhat I do.To do this, I create a mind map with something like “Life Status –End of 20xx” in the center with all of the life areas branching out,and then add as much detail as possible about that area.G-&-*%$ Q)-.'+(&. & P*(0#'.➙ Detailed answers to each of the questions at the start of thissection.➙ A short paragraph summarizing your thoughts about thatarea of your life.➙ Project status updates.➙ Projects completed in the past year?➙ Milestones from the past year?➙ Important events from the past year?➙ Accomplishments?➙ Failures? 8,760 HOURS | 12➙ Key life metrics such as income, qual-ity of relationships, amount of dona-tions, etc.?➙ Your overall rating for this area➙ Strengths in this area? Weaknesses?For many of these, such as the overall arearating and many of the key metrics, I likeusing a seven-level Likert Scale from 1 (verybad) to 7 (very good).6H%00+&2 Q)-.'+(&.Richard Hamming used to ask his co-work-ers over lunch, “What are the importantproblems of your field?” and then a whilelater ask “What problems are you workingon?” and then a while later ask “Why aren’tyou working on the important problems?”He soon found himself unwelcome at manylunch tables!7The general theme here is that we oftenknow what problems in our lives are moreimportant, yet we don’t work on them!Here are some additional questions to askof yourself, both for each life area, and also6 The full scale goes (1) very bad, (2) bad, (3) somewhatbad, (4) neither bad nor good, (5) somewhat good, (6)good, and (7) very good. If you want to keep things evensimpler, consider using the five-level scale: very bad, bad,neutral, good, and very good.7 Hamming mentions this is his talk “You and YourResearch.” H/t to CFAR for driving home how useful andimportant these questions are.your life as a whole:➙ What is the most important problemhere?➙ What is my biggest bottleneck?➙ What is most holding me back fromachieving my full potential?➙ What single thing, if successfully per-formed, would have the biggest impacthere?An example might be “solve my bad sleepproblems.” If you have reasons to think youare not sleeping well—sleep apnea, bad mat-tress, intermittent noise, etc.—it seems real-ly important to tackle this head-on as quicklyas possible. Poor sleep has a significant ef-fect on your quality of life and your abilityto do anything with your life.A N('- %/()' J)32-0-&'.It is important in this part of the process tobe objective and descriptive about the world,without judgement. Don’t ignore internaljudgements when they pop up—they inevit-ably will— but write them down separatelyfor the next step of this process. I.e., get itout of your head, but then refocus on paint-ing the descriptive picture of your life.For example, ideas and future plans oftenpop into my head while doing this. Samewith thoughts like “ugh, I really wish thispart was better.” I quickly jot these ideasdown on a separate piece of paper, for laterreference, and then continue on with thecurrent task.v v vAs you brainstorm for each of the life areas,review the descriptions outlined earlier.Also, feel free to use the following questionsand metrics that I use in my review mindmap.V%$)-. & P)*#(.-➙ Do I have a sense of purpose and dir-ection in life?➙ What do I want out of life?➙ How do I want the world to be differ-ent?➙ What is my philosophy of life?➙ What are my fundamental values?➙ What do I truly value?C(&'*+/)'+(& & I0#%5'➙ How am I giving value to the world?How much value?➙ How much money did I give away inthe past year (assuming it made senseto do so)? Who did it go to? Did ithave the most possible impact?➙ Am I taking responsibility for, and re- 8,760 HOURS | 13ducing, my environmental impact onthe world?➙ Am I making a difference?➙ Am I contributing to important andworthy causes that I care about?➙ How much impact does my existencehave (environmentally, socially, cog-nitively)?L(5%'+(& & T%&2+/$-.➙ Do I have material sufficiency?➙ Where do I live? Where is my home?Where in the world am I?➙ What is my living situation like?➙ Am I tied to one location? Am I read-ily mobile (if desired)?➙ How much stuff do I own? Do I havetoo many things?➙ Is my life cluttered?M(&-" & F+&%&5-.➙ Do I have savings? How much? Whereare they?➙ Do I have an emergency fund? Howmuch? Where is it?➙ What is the status of my assets andinvestments?➙ Do I know where my money goes?➙ Do I budget? What is my budget?➙ Am I aware of how I spend mymoney?➙ How do I want to be spending mymoney?➙ Are my finances organized?➙ Do I have any (unwanted) debt?C%*--* & W(*6➙ How do I make my money?➙ What do I do? What is my position?What is my role? Where do I work?➙ Am I so good they can't ignore me?➙ Does my career give me mastery, con-trol, and purpose?➙ Am I engaged?➙ Am I well-positioned and networkedwithin my industry?➙ How stressful is my career/work?H-%$'! & F+'&-..➙ What do I typically eat? What is mycurrent diet?➙ Do I regularly eat fast food or makehealthy home-cooked meals?➙ Am I generally tired or alert?➙ How often do I get sick?➙ Do you exercise? What form? Howoften?➙ How much do I sleep on average? AmI getting good quality sleep?➙ How much do I weigh?➙ What is my resting heart rate?➙ Are there any health risks that run inmy family? Am I taking adequate stepsto address these?Figure 3: My Health & Fitness review. 8,760 HOURS | 14E3)5%'+(& & S6+$$ D-7-$(#0-&'➙ What is my current education status?What do I know?➙ Am I spending time learning newthings and developing my mind?➙ What are my talents and skills?➙ How much have I read in the pastyear?➙ What talents and skills have I recentlydeveloped, or plan to develop?S(5+%$ L+,- & R-$%'+(&.!+#.➙ How is my home life?➙ How is my relationship with themembers of my immediate and ex-tended family?➙ Am I a good friend?➙ How many core friends do I have?How large are my social circles?➙ Am I cared for, loved, and valued byothers?➙ Are my partner and I aware of eachother’s needs and desires?➙ What clubs, organizations, and com-munities am I a member of?➙ Do I have influence and status in mysocial circles? In society?E0('+(&. & W-$$-B-+&2➙ How do I feel about my life?➙ Am I enjoying life?➙ Am I generally optimistic or pessim-istic?➙ Am I generally positive or negative?➙ Am I easily aware of my current emo-tional state?➙ Am I quick to notice how my emo-tions are influencing my thoughts, ac-tions, and decisions?➙ Do I have a regular mindfulness prac-tice?➙ Do I practice self-compassion?C!%*%5'-* & I&'-2*+'"➙ What identity do I have?➙ Is my identity small? http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html➙ What are my key strengths and weak-nesses?➙ What are my greatest virtues andvices?➙ How do I rate my compassion, integ-rity, empathy, honor, self-discipline,self-awareness, responsibility, cour-age, focus, authenticity, confidence,persistence, effectiveness, etc.? 8,760 HOURS | 15P*(3)5'+7+'" & O*2%&+:%'+(&➙ What productivity systems and tools do I use?➙ Am I organized? What are my systems?➙ What are my routines and rituals?➙ Is there too much complexity in my life? Do I need to simplify?➙ Am I doing any deep work?➙ Am I busy due to a lack of priorities?➙ Do I have a good workspace environment and setup?A37-&')*- & C*-%'+7+'"➙ Am I experiencing what I want to experience in life?➙ What fun things have I done lately? In general?➙ What creative things have I done lately? In general?➙ What are my hobbies? What do I do for fun?This whole process can easily take several hours. Once I’ve gone through every area I do asecond pass to catch the things I inevitably missed on the first pass.The end result is a massive mind map with a complete picture of the current status of yourlife. The following figure gives my Health & Fitness review from last year as an example.When you are satisfied with your awareness of the present state of your life, you are readyto move on to planning. 8,760 HOURS | 16III THE NEXT 8,760 HOURSNow that you have a goodassessment of your presentstate of existence it is timeto begin planning for thefuture as a whole, and spe-cifically the next year.YOUR IDEAL FUTUREThe first thing to do is to know what idealsyou are aiming for.I go through all areas of my life and re-view how I would want them to look in aperfectly ideal world. What kind of careerwould I have? How much money would Imake? What would my social circles looklike? How much positive impact would Ihave on the world? What important prob-lems would I have solved?I put all of this in a new mind map calledFuture Vision and Goals.88 If you've already done this before, now is a good timeto review and update your “ideal future,” but there may beno need to go through the entire exercise again.Since I have already done this for sev-eral years, nowadays I tend to review myexisting mind map and make any changesas needed. Though, it is important to viewinformation from previous years with fresheyes, and keep only what is compelling andmeaningful right now.Don’t fill up a mind map with things youwould like, that would be nice. For exampledon’t put “Make $1,000,000,000 per year”—unless that really is a goal you’re striving toreach.The point isn’t to think, “Well, I might aswell set my ideal as having 1,000 cars.”Rather, seriously ask yourself what youwant your life to look like! When you’redone you should have a good sense of whatthe ideal you looks like. It should be full ofbig lofty goals and coolness, as well as smallnudges and tweaks.Some questions to help you think abouteach life area:➙ What do I want this to be like?➙ What would be awesome?➙ What would this look like if it wasperfect?➙ What is something I’ve always wantedto do here?➙ What would my ideal life look like?➙ Are there any specific projects to fin-ish or goals to accomplish in this area?➙ if I were to die in a year, what wouldI do?➙ if I were to die in 10 years, whatwould I do?➙ For the metrics in each area, what do Iideally want them to be?➙ If this area were improved, whatwould that look like? I.e., make it vis-ually concrete.THE NEXT 8,760 HOURSNow it’s time to start extracting what to doover the next year from your highest idealsand largest gaps.What will you do with the next 8,760 hoursof your life? Not the next twenty years, notthe next five years, but this coming year. 8,760 HOURS | 17Y-%*$" T!-0-It may help to start off with a theme in mind for the upcomingyear. This next year can be your “Year of _______________.” Thiscould be a specific accomplishment (finish school, run a marathon) ora general goal (learn about cognitive psychology).For example, my 2011 theme of the year was “independence” be-cause I wanted to take a break from my job, do some backpackingin South America, become “lighter” (sell or get rid of most of mypossessions) and free myself from all debt.9Having the theme helped remind me what I wanted the main thrustof my year to be.If your life is in a state of flux or uncertainty then this may not beuseful. In the first few years of doing this, my yearly theme endedup having no bearing on my projects and actions; life was con-stantly changing, as were my interests and goals. If you expect thatto happen to you, consider doing quarterly or monthly themes, ordropping this altogether.S-''+&2 % F(5).There are a lot of different aspects of your life. Any breakdown oflife areas could be broken down further if we wanted to, but thenit may get unwieldy.We have only a limited amount of time, so we need to decide whatwe will focus on for the upcoming year.Now you should take some time to figure out what the most im-portant areas of your life you want to focus on in the next year.I like to rate each category out of seven in terms of importance.9 It was a resounding success!This should help give an idea of what parts you think are less idealthan others.Also, don’t forget about the Hamming Questions mentioned ear-lier, which can be very useful for identifying priorities and import-ant focus areas.YOUR MAJOR GOALSDo you have any specific 1–2 year goals? Both a benefit and a flawfrom picturing your ideal life is that it tends to lack concreteness.Goals tend to resemble new year’s resolutions in that they arevague, non-specific, and hard to measure: “regularly exercise,” forexample.Go through your mind map of your ideal life and extract somespecific important goals from it. List some key things that youwant to do in the next year. Can they be organized into projects?Are they specific and measurable?W!%' A/()' L(&2-*-T-*0 G(%$.?At least for the present, I am done with specific long-term goals.My life is in too much flux to realistically plan what I'll be doing innext twenty years or even five years. My interests are too diverse toknow how I will want to be spending my time five years from now.That said, I do still have some pretty specific medium-term goalsfor the next year or two that I want to focus on.If you have long-term goals that’s fine, but you may want to breakthem up into smaller major goals that can be completed in 1–2years.Now that you have an idea of what you want to focus on next year,what are your most important major goals? Try to limit it to 3–5 8,760 HOURS | 18things. Remember, if you end up accom-plishing those over the next year then youcan always add more, but do not bite offmore than you can chew.Now create a new mind map called CurrentMajor Goals and add your most importantgoals to it.Some examples of my major goals from pre-vious years:Travel—Get off this continent and experi-ence another culture; expand my know-ledge and awareness of humanity; live outof my backpack; meet cool people; havefun. [Success! I backpacked through thehighlands of Ecuador for seven weeks atthe end of 2011.]Write 100,000 words—Get some practicewriting; complete NaNoWriMo; writeregular blog posts. [Partial success: Iwrote over 100,000 words and completedNaNoWriMo, but did not write nearly asmany blog posts as planned.]Red point a 5.12c climbing route—Lead climba 5.12c difficulty climbing route, using asmany attempts as needed. [Failed: spentall my time bouldering (shorter problems,no rope) rather than lead climbing. In thiscase I dropped the goal half-way throughthe year because my interests changed.]Eliminate ALL financial debt—Studentloans, money owed parents, money owedothers; avoid all credit card debt. [Suc-cess!]Spend the time to really think about this!What are the most important things youwant to do over the next year?A N('- A/()' M-'%-S6+$$.Meta-skills are those that help you achieveall of your goals. For example, exercise isoverwhelmingly shown to improve manyareas of your health and overall life. Thisbetter enables you to do everything else thatyou want to do.Likewise, taking the time to learn abouthuman motivation and procrastination hasmore than doubled my productivity.Every time I set my major goals for the yearI try to have at least one meta-skill goal. Aprevious year it was to consciously workon fighting my procrastination tendencies(which resulted in my procrastination post-er and a bunch of permanent improvementsto my overall productivity).v v vNow that we have a good awareness of ourpresent reality and our important majorgoals, we are ready to set ourselves up forsuccess over the next 8,760 hours. 8,760 HOURS | 19IV OPTIMIZING FOR SUCCESSThis may be the most important part ofthe whole process outlined in this guide.Reviewing our lives and outlining ma-jor goals for the upcoming year is great,but it is far from the most we can do.The internet is full of life-hacking and optimization tips and tricks,and I can’t possibly cover them all, so here are just a few of myfavorites.THE PROCRASTINATION EQUATIONThe procrastination equation is a way of illustrating how our mo-tivations work. This equation accounts for every major finding onprocrastinationWhat this shows is that we are more motivated (less likely to pro-crastinate) when either our expectancy of success or how much wevalue a task are higher. Likewise, if we can decrease our impulsive-ness (in short: our inability to focus on one thing) and decrease thedelay until we are rewarded or a task is accomplished, we will bemore motivated.This comes from The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel, avail-able from any bookstore. For my own take on summarizing thecore ideas in this book, take a look at the free poster I made:BUILDING ON THE MAJOR GOALSFor each of your major goals (and as many sub-goals or sub-pro-jects as you see fit) address all of the following things.“S)55-..,” D-'%+$., %&3 M-'*+5.For each specific goal or project try to answer the following:➙ What exactly is the project or goal?➙ What will success look like? How will the world be different ifthis succeeds?➙ How can I measure it?Motivation = Expectancy × ValueImpulsiveness × Delay