Hello everybody,
Greetings from Toronto! It’s my first time here. I landed in Canada this morning, and after stepping off the Boeing 737, I went to border security, handed over my passport, and hit it off with the Canadian customs official. His name was Harding.
Maybe I was suspicious. Maybe I was friendly. Maybe I was suspiciously friendly. Regardless, we started talking about the North Star Podcast, and by the time he stamped my passport, he was a Monday Musings subscriber. Hi Harding!
Maybe I’m just in a good mood. I spent the weekend with six friends on a retreat in upstate New York. The weekend retreat was really an Annual Review. A time to reflect on 2018 and prepare for 2019. I hosted the retreat with Chris Sparks (a professional poker player and productivity coach) who I’ve been working with for a couple months now.
I can’t recommend an Annual Review retreat enough. If you decide to host one, here’s what I suggest:
1. Preparation
Each participant was tasked with a couple hours of writing homework. Answering a common list of questions ensured that everybody was prepared and kept everybody on the same page. The questions were as follows:
In 2018, what were your biggest wins? What did you learn from each?
In 2018, where was your time, attention, and energy was best spent in 2018? How could you double down in these areas?
In 2018, where could your time, attention, and energy have been spent better? What steps could you take to make this a reality?
What does everyone around you know about you, that you don’t know about you?
Who do you need to become for chapter 2019 of your life story to turn out the way you want it to?
If you had to accomplish all of your 10-year goals in the next 12 months, what would you do?
2. The Hot-Seat
The Hot-Seat was the most important part of the Annual Review Retreat. It’s the most valuable activity, precisely because it’s the most vulnerable moment of the weekend. When you’re on the hot seat, all the attention is on you. 30 minutes. There’s no choice. You have to open up.
The time is split into three ten-minute increments. Here’s how it works:
First, you stand up in front of the group and share your biggest problem or challenge with the audience.
The next ten minutes is devoted to questions. To gain context and understand the problem, the audience fires with clarifying question after clarifying question.
The last ten minutes is advice-oriented. The person on the hot seat cannot reply. They must listen to the audience’s advice and take notes.
The best Hot-Seat sessions were the most personal. The deeper you go, the wider the benefits.
Human problems are multi-layered. We protect ourselves with cozy narratives and run away from anything that smells like trauma. Problems are nested within each other. Breakthrough answers are hidden inside the deep dark depths of consciousness. The Hot-Seat is a guaranteed way to break through those layers and have an epiphany.
3. What You Need to Know
Keep substances to a minimum. You’re there for a purpose. Honor your commitment.
Rent a house with a hot tub if you can. Hot tubs guarantee good conversation. The highlight of the weekend was a long conversation with two friends, sitting under a starry, polka-dotted sky.
As a retreat organizer, you aren’t just creating an experience. You’re creating a memory. Use the peak-end rule to your advantage — as humans, we tend to remember two things: (1) the most intense part of the experience and (2) the end of the experience. The mood you leave with matters. Knowing this, we closed the weekend with an Escape-The-Room-Challenge and 90 minutes of laser tag.
Long, uninterrupted time with quality people adds more value to my life than almost any other activity. Society is structured around short bursts of friendship. Coffees. Lunches. Dinners.
Instead of spending two or three hours with somebody, I prefer to spend two or three days with them. More, if possible. Time has the effect of pushing conversation deeper. After 24 hours, the small talk disappears, and after 48 hours, philosophizing is inevitable. The quality of discussion and the persistence of shared memories increases exponentially with time.
In just 48 hours, we sowed the seeds of deep friendships, which will continue to sprout. In a world where extended time with friends is scarce, we compressed six months of friendship development into two days.
On average, most people don’t have enough structure in their friend groups. They just wing it. As a result, the roots of friendship don’t soak into the soil, which prevents vertical growth later on.
When you’re a kid, most of your friendships are competitive. People one-up each other with stories. They compete over money, fame and status.
I want the opposite. I want cooperative friendships with zero competition. If there is competition, it must be healthy and productive. My friends and I are a team. When they succeed, I succeed; when I succeed, they succeed. I won’t have it any other way. No exceptions.
As the world changes faster and faster, the utility of friendship should increase. The future is blurry. Since the world is hard to predict, you need friends to help you. The right friends will help you navigate the future and point your career in a productive direction.
Friends who help each other have a huge advantage. You and your friends are like cartographers — mapping out the future. Weekend retreats are a great place to begin.
Fresh Ideas
New Article: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018
Ok friends.
I wrote a listicle. Yes, a listicle. It’s basically a BuzzFeed post — remixed with zesty Monday Musings flavors.
It’s super fun and that’s the point. I hope you enjoy it.
North Star Podcast: Gillian Morris
Gillian is the founder and CEO of Hitlist, an app that alerts you when there are cheap flights for your dream trips. Fast Company named Hitlist one of the Best Apps of 2017 and the app has been featured as a 'Best New App' by the app store in 83 countries.
Conversation Topics:
Gillian’s experience as a journalist in Turkey
What it’s like to spend time in war zones in Syria and Afganistan
“Swimming Across Guantanamo”
Why Tinder is the world’s best travel app
Alternative Parenting Strategies
You can listen to the podcast here.
Coolest Things I Learned This Week
People are Moving to Where It’s Hotter
That is from Bloomberg. The rest is from The Rent is Too Damn High:
"The “booming” cities of the Southeast and the western United States aren’t necessarily booming in the sense of getting rich. The ten metropolitan areas with the fastest population growth between the 2000 and 2010 censuses were, in order, Palm Coast, Florida; St. George, Utah; Las Vegas, Nevada; Raleigh, North Carolina; Cape Coral, Florida; Provo, Utah; Greeley, Colorado; Austin, Texas; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Bend, Oregon.
That geographical distribution supports the idea of a boom in the Southeast and West. But it’s striking that in 2009 all ten of these metro areas had per capita personal incomes below the national average of $40,757. Indeed, only Cape Coral was even close.”
Find Your Tribe
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever got, back when I was 23 and newly out of school, is this: look around and figure out who you want to be on your team. Figure out the people around you that you want to work with for the rest of your life. Figure out the people who are smart & awesome, who share your values, who get things done — and maybe most important, who you like to be with and who you want to help win. And treat them right, always. Look for ways to help, to work together, to learn. Because in 20 years you’ll all be in amazing places doing amazing things.”
Where is GDP Concentrated?
The World is Becoming an Old Person’s Home
Especially true once you remove the United States.
A Term You Gotta Know: Gell-Mann Amnesia
What Kobe Bryant Used to Read.
Photo of the Week
Here is the annual review squad. We snapped this photo during brunch in Cold Springs, New York.
7 guys. All committed to helping each other grow, improve, and tackle the new year with passion and enthusiasm. That’s what friendship is all about.
Have a great week,
David Perell