Agile Results for Year-End Reflection

If you use Agile Results, from Getting Results the Agile Way, as your productivity system, you already know that the key to the system is using The Rule of Three:

• Three Wins for Your Day
• Three Wins for Your Week
• Three Wins for Your Month
• Three Wins for Your Year

This helps you prioritize outcomes and meaningful achievements, so that you can see the forest for the trees and avoid getting lost in the minutia and the chaos.

It also helps you plan “just enough” and adapt as you go, while still having clarity around what counts, and figuring out what’s valued, and most importantly, giving you a better way to articulate the value you create, and tell a simple story around your personal victories.

But the Three Wins for Your Year idea doesn’t always sync in.  Not at first.

It doesn’t really sync in or hit you until you get to the end of the year, and as you get ready to turn the page, you ask yourself:

“How did I do against my Three Wins for the Year?”

Here’s how that might go …

• For some of you, the answer will be that you didn’t even set any goals, so you don’t have any wins.   If you went with the flow, and the flow went well, great.   For some people it did.  For some people, that flow was not a river.  It was a waterfall.
• For some of you, the answer will be that you remember setting Three Wins for the Year earlier this year, but you don’t remember what they were. 
• For some of you, the answer will be that you made progress on some of your Three Wins for the Year.  Progress is a powerful thing (in fact, for many people it’s actually the key to their happiness and they control it.)
• For some of you, the answer will be that you nailed your Three Wins for the Year.  Maybe you lucked into them.  Or maybe you achieved them without even realizing it.  Or maybe you intentionally invested in them, and your effort paid off.

In each case, you learned something. And now you can feel something:

If you nailed your Three Wins for the Year, congratulations – hats off to you! What a great way to close out the year with your Three Wins for the Year under your belt.

If you didn’t nail your Three Wins for the Year, use this moment to figure out what you can do differently. Do you need to put them in a more visible place so that you keep them top of mind? Do you need to add blocks of time to your calendar so that you actually work towards your wins? Do you need to pair up with somebody so you can learn from them and get over any humps or hurdles?

Remember that these are YOUR wins.

They are for you. They are your victories. They are things that YOU want to achieve. Your Three Wins for the Year should inspire you and “pull” you forward throughout the year. Maybe they are bold ambitions. Maybe they are just challenging enough to help you reach your next level. Maybe they are simply things you need to work on so feel it was a year well spent.

Just by reflecting on your Three Wins for the Year, you should gain a lot of insight into what you need to work on, and now you should really, really appreciate with full empathy how simple, but how powerful it is to identify Three Wins for the Year, each year.

The real twist is this: it’s to identify what you really, really WANT this year. In fact, the simplest way I figure out my Three Wins is to ask myself, “If I were a genie, what three wishes would I grant myself?” Surprisingly, it’s almost always something that I could achieve within the year, if I focus and invest in achieving it.

I use the “Genie in a Bottle” test, because sometimes it can be really, really hard to drop all the filters of what I *should* want, or what other people want for me, or too mired in myopic things that are too immediate, which will already take care of themselves. This simple test reminds me to take a step back, and without over-thinking it, get a good handle on some things that might motivate or inspire me so that I go into the year, looking forward to things that I’d like to achieve. Your wishes can pull you forward, as you turn your dreams into reality.

One of the best gifts you can give yourself, is the gift of three wishes for this year.

Go for it.