Fair warning: I'm going to take a bit of a long, winding path to the context for this week's question.
One of the recommended steps of the 12WY process is to set a weekly accountability meeting (WAM) with someone where you score your week, review what went well, what didn't and align on your plan for the next week. I started the process without a WAM but fortunately the universe conspired in my favor and one of my friend's wanted to try out the 12WY too so we became accountability partners.
My 12WY wrapped at the end of March. Here's quick breakdown of what worked & what didn't:
- What worked:
- Weekly accountability meetings: this is 100% the only reason I saw any level of success out of this process
- Having clear boundaries for how I was going to spend my time: allowed me to say no to a lot of things without the usual feeling of guilt
- RocketMoney for tracking my spending: the biggest win of my first 12WY process was I decreased my spending by 20%
- Time blocking my calendar: whenever I put my actions in my calendar, I saw success
- What didn't work:
- Setting too many action items per week: we ended up creating a cap to the # of action items we could list each week
- Pre-setting my weekly actions far in advance: this meant the actions I was committing to weren't necessarily the most impactful based on how the prior week went
- Maintaining my routine while traveling: this was my biggest weak point and given I travel at least once a month it's something I'm actively trying to address
The same friend who become my accountability partner was consistently raving about a community called
To Be Magnetic - which ironically I was paying for already but hadn't really engaged. I decided to take their intro course, How to Manifest, and fell in love with their content. I won't go too deep into it in this newsletter but the main thing I want to call out is a process they have you go through of defining your authentic code.
I talk a lot about what it means to operate in alignment with your
human design and I love that your authentic code gives you a measuring stick for that process. To Be Magnetic defines your authentic code as
your core essence. It defines the values that make up who you are and dictates what should be filling all of your time.
To get to your authentic code, they have a long list of questions you can ask yourself like:
- What is most organized in your life? From your calendar to your environment, to your bank, to your social life? List the top four.
- What do you spend most of your time thinking about? When you find yourself in a moment of stillness, what subjects come to mind? List the top four.
- When it comes to time online, what do you love to learn about most? What do you find yourself researching? What books, YouTube videos, or blogs? List the top four.
- When it comes to time online, what do you love to learn about most? What do you find yourself researching? What books, YouTube videos, or blogs? List the top four.
- Where are you most reliable in your life? To whom? To what? When? List the top four.
The answers to these questions (+ something they call Deep Imaginings) reveal a through line of your core values.
Part of the way through the 12WY, I defined my authentic code and started exploring how I can better align my time spent with honoring my values. Here's what I landed on for my code:
- Self-expression
- Freedom (to change, to grow, to expand)
- Connection
- Rest
And this revealed a large part of what was missing from my first round of the 12WY - intentionality around time spent refilling my own cup. My goals were very output focused so I'd end every week feeling pretty burnt out from execution.
Given that revelation, here's what I'm doing differently for the second round of the 12WY:
- Aligning my goals with my authentic code: I have a goal for self-expression (writing more); freedom (currently focused on financial freedom); rest (increasing hours of sleep per night + movement enabling rest); and connection (building community in LA and dipping my toe in the dating waters)
- Deciding my actions for the week on Sundays: based on prior week's output
- Tying in The Artist's Way with weekly Artist Dates and Morning pages: already feeling the impact of parallel pathing these two processes
