Andrej Klokner

The New Year is here, and I wish you a joyful and prosperous 2023.

Many people are excited about the new year and have started making resolutions or creating goals. But some of you may feel somewhat unsettled, unmotivated, or even scattered.

If that’s so, I have a short exercise for you to complete the last year so that you can feel free from whatever happened in 2022 and start fresh.

• Every year, I go through these questions to end a chapter called “the last year”:
• What did I accomplish this year (personally and professionally)?
• What did I intend to accomplish that I didn’t?
• How did I grow and develop this year (e.g., new or expanded capacities, better at intervening in patterns that no longer serve me and others, etc.)?
• What do I regret?
• What am l angry about?
• What am I grateful for?
• Who is there to acknowledge and appreciate their contribution?

Once I have thoroughly answered these questions, I will pause for at least a few days before creating my next chapter. Then I can create the next chapter for the new year from a place of clarity rather than a reaction.

And, instead of looking at what “goals” you will achieve this year, I invite you to ask yourself the following question: What will you put your attention to?

You can imagine the attention being like water and what is getting watered that will (very likely) grow. It’s almost impossible not to succeed in any area of your life as long as you give it time and attention.

So, what will you put your attention to? Write a comment below, I’d love to know what it is!

May 2023 be for you the year of lightness, ease and being in the flow.

Over the past few weeks, I have become frustrated and unsatisfied that I haven’t been producing results, my website development was slow, and I felt busy all the time. My frustrations would translate into my internal dialogue as I am not good enough. Sounds familiar?

So I started to look at what was behind the lack of results. As I sat down and began to think about work and my personal time, family, and refurbishment we’re undergoing… I realized the true killer of my performance and productivity was the number of incompletions. 

What I mean by an incompletion is when you look around in your immediate environment, the incompletion is every single item that has you stop what you are doing now. The incompletions will often have you start drifting further away from what you were doing. Incompletion is every item starting with a thought or feeling like, “Oh, I forgot to do this or that.” Or, “I didn’t do this, I should do it sometimes,” or “l’ll need to do it soon,” and “l’d like to do it,” etc. 

I will assume (with fair certainty) that you also have items like this in your life. So the first step in dealing with incompletions is a daily habit: pick one incompletion at a time and complete it. I know it sounds simple and obvious. And yes, there is a but. 

My incompletion was that my calendar was a mess. When I sat down to deal with it, my brain shouted, “you must send an email to a client first; then you can make a plan and get organized.” This is just an example, but your brain will also give you many reasons why you shouldn’t complete what you just started. 

Starting a habit of completing things can be something simple. For example, you can begin to practise simple things like charging your AirPods. Or, you can throw away unnecessary papers on your desk, clean a dirty cup on your desk, or tick off one item from your to-do list that you have been dreading for weeks.

With many items, you will see that, shockingly, the things you have been avoiding for too long took very little time. And, you can verify the impact that incompletions have on you: there is a general sense of being proud of yourself and experiencing yourself as a bigger person when you complete something. Being powerful and alive is who each of us deep inside is. 

On Thursday, 17 November, I am opening a six-week course for those who are interested and feel the need to connect to what is really important for them and fearlessly take action to live a more satisfying life. Elevating productivity and getting more done every day will be just the cherry on top. I’ll share more with you soon!

A few months ago, my wife and I bought a house outside of London. We had a clear plan for a kitchen extension and a complete house refurbishment. Just a side note: The extension would require the most significant time and financial investment.

Then last Sunday, Hana asked me this question: “What if we DIDN’T do the extension”? I started to feel uncomfortable after we did all the planning, from hiring an architect to getting a planning permit, but we sat with the question and gave it a real thought.

Finally, we made a groundbreaking decision: we’re NOT DOING the kitchen extension. As you can imagine, I was happy about the cost reduction, but most importantly, I got present to how much l love spending time with our two little boys and my wife, rather than thinking about “a bunch of bricks” that are not important to me at all.

We all share the following experience at work and home sometimes: 

• There is so much to do, or 
• I wish I had more time, or 
• I do not want to do this and that, but I have to, and
• Keep on rolling and do what we have always been doing.

Here’s a quick exercise I invite you to do this evening or tomorrow morning before doing all your usual stuff. Ask yourself the following question, “What will l NOT do?” and see if you can NOT do at least one thing.

Tip no. 1: Give yourself permission to play big – it shouldn’t be something too easy to give up.

Tip no. 2: Yes, it is OK to feel weird, uncomfortable, afraid, and have doubts. 

Tip no. 3: Tell everybody whom this has impacted that you will NOT do it, so they no longer have expectations of you doing it.

I would be curious to hear the impact on your life after you took one heavy “stone” off your chest.