Hello friend,

Four “new year gifts” for you in this email.

​​If you use them well, you will experience better life, better business, better relationships almost immediately.

Promise to read this email till the end.

Ready?

Let’s begin.

Your life in 18 blocks

Consider you’d live for 90 years.

Even if you don’t agree with that number, for now, consider you’d live for 90 years.

If you divide your life in blocks of five years each, you’d have 18 blocks.

Open a fresh page in your journal (or grab a paper) and make a grid with 18 blocks – 2×9 or 3×6 – whatever fits. Each block should be large enough to write a few bullet points. Add a heading inside the blocks to indicate what years it represents. For example: 0-5, 5-10, 10-15 and so on.

Put a small dot next to the block with your current age.

Fill in all previous blocks with the most important events, achievements in those years. Use bullet points and write with smaller handwriting if you need to 😀.

Now design what you want to create in each of the remaining life blocks.

We typically think in days, weeks, months and years. But rarely in five year periods.

Like Bill Gates said, it’s hard for us to get a grip on time as large as a decade. There are too many dynamics.

Yet, if you look back at your life so far, you’ll recognize milestones in each five year block you’ve lived.

Use those insights to guide you in creating the remaining (or at least the next five-six) blocks.

Take some time to review and revise as needed.

Congratulations!.

You’ve designed the priorities for your life. You will be living a life you invented – not something that occurred as a collection of reactions to events, circumstances and people around you.

BTW, here’s another interesting perspective: your life in weeks.

A new habit that’s totally unlike you

Most of our new year resolutions and goals are an extension of what we’ve been doing already or what we wanted to do for a long time.

How about installing a new habit (or hobby) that’s unfamiliar and very different from your usual personality. Imagine Albert Einstein picking dance as a new hobby, or your favorite music artist learning gardening. Or your favorite superhero attending origami classes for fun.

What atypical hobby can you take on?

Think about a few. Pick one that brings a smile on your face.

Then do what’s necessary to realize that goal.

Why?

Because it stretches your horizons. Because you have a first hand experience of designing life. Because it trains you into accomplishing unlikely goals. And because it sparks joy!

I chose cooking and have already made some progress.

What are you choosing?

You know that you can reply to this email and let me know, right?

Write your own 2021 annual review

You may have read annual reviews from other people already. Have you written yours yet?

Here’s how I do them:

• Group items into months or quarters. Since I set quarterly goals, writing quarterly reviews goes hand in hand.
• Review different areas of life – work, health, relationships, self growth, finances, travel…
• Summarize important actions you took, results you produced and lessons you learned.
• Mention important events and milestones.
• If you use Evernote or other note taking app, you can cross reference items.

Why do such reviews matter?

• We’re generally stuck in the halo effect of the recent past and an annual review pulls us out to the reality of the whole year.
• It also forces us to pause and think about where we’re and the future direction we need to take.
• They’ll come really handy when you write your autobiography! 😀

Write your own 2021 annual review today. It’ll be worth the effort.

Email Subscribers annual review

“OMG, we got so much done this year” is how I feel when I look at everything we did in Email Subscribers plugin this year!

• January – import WP users, map fields while importing
• January – Amazon SES support for email sending
• February – triggers and workflow automation feature
• February – abandoned cart recovery triggers and placeholders for WooCommerce
• March – even more secure subscription form
• March – ability to filter recipients while sending a broadcast or sequence
• March – Mailgun, SparkPost and SendGrid support
• March – import contacts from MailChimp
• April – new, cleaner dashboard UI
• April – send emails using Postmark and Mailgun batch sending support
• May – started weekly newsletters (like this email)
• May – performance improvements
• June – import subscribers from WooCommerce orders
• June – support for Pepipost and Sparkpost batch email sending
• July – five star reviews cross 800 mark
• July – bulk resend confirmation emails, workflow on existing orders
• August – pause and resume campaigns, batch email API improvements
• September – New engagement score for audience, Elementor integration, weekly summary report
• October – automatic bounce handling, custom fields in forms
• November – improvements in Amazon SES integration and bounce handling
• November – New rule for campaign sending – bounce status, engagement score
• December – started working on drag and drop editor
• December – new workflow trigger for subscriber unsubscribed
• December – send emails in contacts’ timezone

What’s your favorite feature in Email Subscribers? What would you like us to work on?

Share your feedback by simply replying to this email.

📖

Finish what you start

I am bad at follow ups. I get excited about a lot of different things, add them to my todo list and then struggle with prioritizing and getting them done.

If you’re like me, Peter Hollins’ book can help – “Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline”.

Some ideas from the book:

• Stop thinking, just execute
• Anything we want to accomplish has an associated opportunity cost.
• Three major tasks a day, maximum.
• Try to look into the future, 10 minutes, hours and days at a time. Is it worth the benefit to the current self at the expense of the future self?
• Procrastination thrives off inertia.
• Develop a daily system for success.

Read one of the best summaries of this book here.

Life in five year blocks, new habits, annual reviews and finishing what we start. Those are four ideas worth acting upon.

Take action!

To your success,