S3 Ep11 - Reflection & Adaptation

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Hello, my friends. So in this episode, we're going to talk about reflecting and adapting.

Now, this is the end of season three of the Zen Habits podcast. In this season, we're talking about the Zen of Productivity. And so we've looked at a number of things over the season, from setting goals and intentions, building sustainable habits, simplifying your workspace and workflow, including some of the tools that I use, mindful time management, distractions, procrastination, stress, burnout, the inner state of flow, imperfection, gratitude, wonder, and joy in the last episode.

And so, at the end of the season, we are—as in this moment, actually—I'm reflecting a little bit on the journey that we've been through, and then I'm gonna talk about reflecting as something we will do to serve our productivity. So, there's a role that reflection can play, and then we'll talk about adapting.

We're gonna talk about some techniques for regular self-assessment and then adapting and evolving your practices over time. But as I reflect on this season, what I really want to encourage you to do is look back and see: What did you take from the season? What have you been practicing? What has worked? What is something you want to come back to?

Maybe you've taken some notes. Maybe you've been actually putting this stuff into practice. And if not, maybe there are episodes where you want to go back to re-listen, take some notes, and actually put into action. If you have been putting it into action, what have you learned?

I'm encouraging you in this episode about reflection to actually do some reflection. Sit down, take a good five to ten minutes, and think about what you've gained from your own practice, your own experimenting, your own exploration. And the purpose of that is really multiple—multiple purposes.

The first one is that we deepen our learning. When we set intentions at the beginning of something, that's all well and good, but then we need to come back to it and see: "Okay, I had an intention. How did that go?" So there's the intention, and then there's the actual trying to do something, and then there's the reflection at the end.

And so we can have an intention, like "I am going to do this." Then you try and do it. Then you look and see, "How did that go? Ah, I didn’t do it. Why not? What got in the way? What can I learn from that?" Or, "I did do it, but it kind of only went so-so." Okay, great. What can I learn from that? Or, "I did do it, and it worked really well."

Okay, amazing. What can I learn from that? So in this way, we are coming full circle—from the intention, to the doing, to the reflection—which will help us to learn from the experience. And without this, we actually miss a key part of the learning cycle: trying to understand, "What did I get out of that?"

What did I learn? How do I grow from it? And in learning, if you're trying to learn anything—let's say you wanted to learn a language, right?—it's really good to have a kind of pre-test before you even start learning. So let’s say you want to memorize ten words, right? And ask yourself before you actually start learning those ten words, "What do those ten words mean?"

Maybe you already know one from some cartoon you used to watch growing up—Dora the Explorer, right? Maybe others you can understand through, like, "It looks like this English word." Maybe another one you heard in a movie a long time ago, and then the rest of them you don't know at all.

So you're like, "What the heck does this word mean? I have no idea." But that's actually really important because you're creating the space where, when you go back or when you actually start learning, you'll be like, "Oh, here's this word that I didn’t know. I didn't know anything about. I see it again, and now I can actually fill in the meaning, fill in the information."

So the pre-test is really important, but the post-test is also really important. It actually has us try to recall something from our memory. And so if we take some time after we study something to try and test ourselves, it's going to reinforce the learning. So this is a really important part of the learning process.

And my stance about productivity is that it is a learning process. We are learning what helps us to actually show up and do our meaningful work, have the experience that we want to have, and create what we want to create. And this is not something that someone can just give us, like, "Follow these five steps."

We have to actually be willing to practice it. It's like if someone said, "Here are the five steps for learning to ride a bike or snowboard." Would you actually know how to do that after reading those five steps? No, you have to actually get on the bike or on the snowboard and practice it. Fall down, try again. Fall down, try again.

And so it's a learning process. And that is actually what we're practicing here. You can't just listen to these episodes or watch the YouTube videos. You have to take some notes, go and try it, and then review. So that's the role of reflection because productivity is a learning process and it always will be.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at it—there’s always going to be a new level. So I believe it's incredibly important, and I also believe it’s important in anything that we’re practicing, from mindfulness to habit change.

If you wanted to quit smoking, for example, and you're not doing reflection, you're actually missing out because reflection will let you take an honest look at, like, "Why did I fail today?" Or, "What came up for me that made me really want to smoke? What was working?" And if you miss out on that, you're actually going to make it much more likely that you're going to fail. Same thing with mindfulness. If you reflect back on, "How did I do with my mindfulness intention today?" you will deepen your ability to be mindful going forward.

So I highly recommend a daily reflection for whatever it is that you're trying to learn or practice. And that includes your productivity. So let's talk about some techniques for regular self-assessment. So the first one is what I just talked about: a daily review. Have a ritual at the end of each day where you pause and ask yourself, "How did I do today?"

How did today go for me? And this could just be checking off your to-do list and celebrating all of your accomplishments. It could be moving some of those tasks to the next day and setting some intentions for tomorrow. But I also encourage you to do some reflections. Give yourself some prompts, and the prompts can change over time to what will help you in what you're learning.

But an example of a prompt could be, "What got in my way today? What did I learn from that? And what’s something that I feel went really well?" If you ask yourself those three questions each day for a month, you will learn way more—way more than if you didn’t. And I don’t mean just like 10 percent more—I mean in the realm of five to ten times more. So this is huge. As you go along, you might ask yourself other questions. I wouldn’t recommend more than two or three questions each day. You could even just do one question a day: "What am I grateful for today?" or "What challenges did I overcome today?"

I'm going to give you a few more prompts, and you can see what resonates with you and what you’re doing right now.

Another prompt might be, "What is the spiritual practice that I need to do to overcome these challenges?" Spiritual practice would be one way to word it. Or, "What is the healing I need to do? How do I need to show up to overcome these challenges?" So you can choose which one works for you.

Another one is, "When I fall on my face in this way, what can I do to pick myself back up?" Another one is, "How can I get some help with this—some support?" Maybe I need accountability. Maybe I need someone to talk to. Maybe I need some encouragement. Maybe I need some love. Things like that.

Okay, so a daily reflection with prompts—two or three prompts that might change over time. Maybe just one prompt. A weekly reflection and intention-setting ceremony—let's say it's every Sunday. "What are my intentions for this week? How did I do with last week’s?" I encourage you to do that and share the reflections and intentions with at least one other person.

I actually recommend at least two other people because if you have one person and they drop off the face of the earth for some reason, you have a second. So always have at least two other people besides yourself. So a little triangle. Little triangle groups work really well as a minimum viable accountability group.

Two people can work, but if one drops off, then you're stuck. So if you have three and one drops off, call them back so that you still have three. But if they don’t come back, find a third. Always have three people that you’re going to report to every week, every month. A monthly review is also a good idea.

Set a reminder in your calendar to do a monthly review and set your intentions for the next month. And then, every December, I actually practice a thing called The Sacred Bow. We do this, by the way, in my Fearless Living Academy. If you're not in there, join Fearless Living Academy. In December, you can go through The Sacred Bow with me.

And that's a bow, as in you’re taking a bow to the year—a bow of gratitude, mindfulness, and appreciation. So you're appreciating, celebrating your year, learning from it, reflecting on it, drawing as much learning as you can, and then using those learnings to set your intentions and your structure for the next year.

So that’s every December. Those are the rhythms that I recommend—daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. Now, if you work with a team, you could follow those same ones. With my team, we do daily and weekly. Daily and weekly are our usual rhythms. For a while, we were doing every six weeks as well.

And that’s just to make it nice and complicated for you! But six weeks is a nice timeframe where you can set some intentions for the team, and then come back and review: "How did those go? What can we learn from it?" So these are some ways for regular self-assessment. I would also encourage you to be in a relationship with a coach.

Someone who is supporting you to actually do these kinds of reviews and help you see stuff that you can’t see for yourself. We can’t see what we can’t see. And so you really increase the power of this reflection if you have a coach. If you want to work with me, email me at [email protected], and let's talk. You can also go to coaching.zenhabits.net—a website where you can read more about my coaching and apply.

Okay, so how do we use this to adapt and evolve our productivity practices over time? Hopefully, you really get it—what we're doing is learning from how things went this day, this week, this month, this year.

And as we do that, what we’re going to notice is, like, "Oh, this thing keeps getting in the way." I keep opening social media first thing in the morning, and I get lost, and two hours go by, and I haven’t even started. So how do I overcome that? You might say, "Well, you know what? I’m going to commit to my trio group that I’m going to pick my most important task the day before."

Okay, so at the end of my day, I’m going to pick my number one most important task, and I’m going to do that before I open social media. And I will let them know if I failed or if I didn’t fail. So that would be a way to adapt to that particular blocker that you have. You might have a roadblock—something that keeps stopping you—and by reviewing it, you're like, "Oh man."

"I keep seeing the same blockers over and over again." So how do I overcome that? The technique that I just shared would be an adaptation. Now, it doesn’t have to be that adaptation. Maybe you make some ironclad commitments to people like, "Ah, I said I was going to have this portfolio done by the end of last week, and I didn’t do it."

So I’m going to do it by the end of this week, or I have to record myself singing a country song and post it on YouTube or Instagram or whatever. So you commit to your trio or your team that you're going to make this commitment and actually follow through on it. Then you hold yourself accountable for it.

Let them know. And if you didn’t do it, record that YouTube video or donate to a political candidate you really don’t love. Or whatever it is that would help you stay on that ironclad commitment. So that’s another example of something where you could adjust what you're doing so that you can hit that commitment.

So, some kind of ironclad commitment to others, some kind of commitment to start with your most important task and set that the day before. Maybe you decide, "I’m going to set my three most important tasks, and I’m going to do those three before I check my email." So maybe it takes you two hours to do those three tasks, and then you get into email, but that’s what works for you.

If you're like, "That’s actually not working," maybe you do the first one, check email for ten minutes, do the second one, check email for another ten minutes, then do the third, and then tackle everything else. Great! Maybe you decide, "I need to get on a focus session on Zoom or some other video call with at least one other person so that I can focus on this thing I need to do."

Maybe you need to write your book. "Let me get on a group with two other writers every day at 8 a.m." These are techniques you could use after you've seen what’s stopping you. Maybe you need to start your day with meditation. Maybe a morning workout will help. Maybe you need to have a paper to-do list and try that.

What you're doing is trying a series of experiments until you figure out what works. And what works for you this week might not work next month, so you might need to change the experiment. These are ways to adapt and evolve your productivity practices over time. Now, I don’t claim that the things I just said are an exhaustive list of ways to adapt and evolve, but they're examples—and hopefully, you can get that.

There are many ways to experiment with productivity practices. I'm not going to give you an exhaustive list—you can find many of them for free on the internet—but that’s not the point. The point is that when you notice, through this reflection process, what’s getting in the way, you can find a practice that might work.

Test it out, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, evolve and try something else—or maybe tweak that particular practice. Over time, you’ll find things that work better and better for you. And maybe those won’t work forever, so you might try something else. And so this is the process of adapting and evolving your productivity practices over time.

That’s what I’ve got for you in this episode. And that is the end of our season. I hope you've had a great season with me. If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see in season four, please write to me at [email protected]. I read every single one of those emails, or leave a comment on the YouTube version of this if you're watching the YouTube version.

Leave a comment and let me know what you want to see in season four. I’m reflecting right now on what I’d like to do in season four, and I’m open to suggestions. I’d also love to hear from you on what you got out of this season. It’s a way for you to reflect and share that reflection with me. It would be really meaningful to me.

So thank you, my friends, for being a part of this season. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve loved all of your feedback. I’ve loved hearing from all of you. I want to keep hearing from you. And good luck with the evolution and practice of the Zen of Productivity.

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