John and I are wrapping up the Hindsight Retros Podcast, with this episode being a retro on our partnership. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s been a guest on our podcast, and to all of our listeners. While this may be the final episode, the catalog of episodes will be available online for the foreseeable future; feel free to share with your friends. We hope this project sparked new ideas and perspectives on reflecting on your personal experiences with a blameless retro approach.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Start with the End In Mind

Discuss and document individual and shared goals of a partnership early on and regularly revisit them to ensure alignment. While goals don’t have to be identical, identifying where they overlap or may be in conflict early can prevent later misunderstandings.

Plan for specific decision points or milestones to reach and agree to discuss the partnership's performance against those milestones. These checkpoints allow for necessary pivots to improve the partnership or signal a need to exit gracefully before becoming trapped in the sunk cost fallacy.

Communication

Effective communication is essential for a successful partnership, requiring ongoing effort and openness. Rather than relying solely on goodwill, develop habits to make sure disagreements get surfaced before they fester. For example, make it a habit of asking for difficult feedback periodically, or agree to use a well documented model like Radical Candor or Crucial Conversations.

Listen to your feelings; even if things seem on the surface to be going OK, your intuition may be giving you important signals about issues that need to be surfaced. A useful metaphor from lean manufacturing is the Andon which gives anyone on the team the license to pull a cord to stop production to address an issue.

Personal Styles

We all collaborate and communicate differently, and that can lead to challenges or misunderstandings. Although personality frameworks such as True Colors, Myers Briggs, or Enneagram have limitations, they can provide a shared framework for fostering mutual understanding and improving teamwork. Talk through preferences and styles early on and create a shared understanding of how you can work best together with others that have different styles.

The Hindsight Retros Blameless Approach to Retrospectives

The four questions to ask in any retrospective:

* What Worked?

* What Didn’t Work?

* Where did we get Lucky?

* What will we do differently next time?

As you answer these 4 questions adopt these mindsets:

* Blameless attitude: avoid blaming yourself or others for what went poorly as this will create an environment of fear and will close our minds to learning

* Systemic Perspective: consider all contributing factors to the situation when examining what went well or not well. This includes the role of luck or happenstance both positively and negatively

* Forward Looking: use the exercise to look ahead for how the learning applies to future experiences and goals

* Growth Mindset: open your mind to growth and change to maximize lasting improvements to your life

* Pattern Matching: look beyond a single experience and seek patterns in your life that can lead to deeper change for you and your relationships

Links to resources from the episode

* On collaboration

* The Book You Were Born to Write

* Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

* Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

* Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

* Podcasting Subreddit

* On our passions

* Several Short Sentences About Writing by Klinkenborg, Verlyn

* 5 Rules for Good Writing | David Foster Wallace

* Google Project Management Certificate Agile Course

* Headspace

* Sketchbook Drawing App

Contact

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Email Sue Lueder

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn and Medium

* Email John Reese

About our Guests

Jenee Hughes worked at Google as a Site Reliability Engineer for 11 years, where she cut her teeth on the Search SRE team before moving over to Identity SRE. She's currently on a largely-analog sabbatical, dipping her toes back into the world of backyard farming and emergency resilience, while also writing two books, attending various classes, and doing SRE consulting for startups that particularly interest her. She can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeneehughes/.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

When dealing with an unknown medical situation, collect documentation of all evidence. Phones make it easy to collect photos and videos with built-in timestamps. Track additional data in spreadsheets, and don’t forget to record the date and time that things happen to your body.

Advocate for yourself. Medicine is still a developing field; doctors are still learning, and they can make mistakes. And remember that what matters is your body and your health as a whole; the fact that a test comes back saying you don’t have some specific condition doesn’t mean that something else isn’t wrong. Doctors form hypotheses, and then use procedures (e.g. blood draws) to test them. Ask the doctors for insight into the debugging process they’re going through: what’s the hypothesis, and how does the procedure test it?

Ask your loved ones for help; a support system is essential, whether you have no idea what’s going on and just need help surviving and documenting the condition, or if the condition’s now understood and you’re following a laborious plan of recovery.

The brain and the body are machines; modern science doesn’t completely understand them, but we’ve learned a whole lot about them. Learning how they work can give you back some power and control when it feels like your body is letting you down. And sharing when you go through something scary can be a service to others; it lets them know these problems are real and, in many cases, can be treated.

Functional Neurological Disorder

The Stanford Functional Neurological Disorder page has many interesting videos explaining the disorder and its treatment, and in the process, shedding a lot of light on how the brain works.

(Some of the videos do not allow direct linking, so in order to make clear which video I’m talking about, I’ll refer to its title and the length, which at least at the moment that I write this are written below each video thumbnail.)

This 53 minute video (“Stanford Health Library: Functional Neurological Disorder with Drs. Lockman and Bullock”) was the one Jenee originally watched; the 4 minute video, “Educational animation of patients and families showing how the brain works in FND and the effects of treatment,” is a more recent creation that’s boiled down to its essence, suitable for communicating not only to people who are affected, but to their family and loved ones.

The diagnosis process was still brand new at the time Jenee was being diagnosed. Based on feedback from her and others during this time, experts improved the diagnosis process and encapsulated the lessons into the 20 minute video entitled “How to deliver the diagnosis of FND and treatment options utilizing the neuroscience of FND.”

In Jenee’s words, “If the brain is the computer, FND is a software problem, not a hardware problem. Fixing FND is like fixing the software by using the buggy software.

The Epley Maneuver

The Epley Maneuver is a way of treating benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. John Epley risked his career to publish it in 1979, as described in his obituary, and it’s only become widespread in the last twenty years; Jenee speculates this may be because YouTube and other video hosting sites make it easier to demonstrate. Check out this New York Times article.

Best Practice Links

* Pre-mortem - Wikipedia

* Functional Neurological Disorder Program | Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences | Stanford Medicine

* What Is WRAP? - Wellness Recovery Action Plan

* Epley maneuver - Wikipedia

Product Links

* A Brief History of Intelligence

* Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight | TED Talk

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Email us at [email protected]

* Follow us on Instagram

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

About our Guests

Nathan Yan is the DJ/event producer at All Your Stupid Friends, a dance party production. He is formerly an engineer at Robinhood and LinkedIn, and currently lives in Silverthorne, Colorado where he plans Taylor Swift parties and spends too much time chasing ski records. You can find him on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Niche Communities Online and in the Real World

Humans are wired for connection. Social media has allowed many to find communities around shared interests, no matter how niche – from spooky lakes to Taylor Swift. Platforms like MeetUp.com, Facebook, and others provide ample opportunities to make these connections online.

Relying exclusively on social media does have limitations. Sociologist and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle warns these tools can fall short of providing the connection we crave. Nathan talks about the crucial moment in his journey when he realized he needed to put down roots in order to have friends and community in the real world. What might have started as a standard trivia night at a local bar evolved into an even deeper connection with a niche community of Taylor Swift fans. This discovery of others who really understand and share our quirks and unusual interests can transform our sense of belonging much more so than vanilla or standard events. In Nathan’s story we see him create this opportunity for his local community, and people like him truly enrich our world by creating these unique and bespoke gatherings.

Runbooks

When faced with a complex event or process to execute, many of us at work will rely on runbooks or playbooks to reduce risk of something going wrong. Some key components of a runbook are:

* Purpose or goals of this event/process

* Required materials and resources before initiating the event/process

* Detailed procedures to follow during the event/process

* Troubleshooting guide in the event something goes awry

Runbooks provide a valuable framework, allowing us to meticulously plan and document the process while we are calm and collected, minimizing the risk of errors or overlooking important steps during the execution.

While runbooks can make your event or process more efficient, there is some risk that the spontaneity of the event will suffer. If your event is enlivened by the emergence of fun or creativity in the moment, consider making the runbook a general outline for the experience as opposed to a strict step by step process that cannot be adjusted on the fly.

Running Retrospectives

Nathan created a spreadsheet to enter his assessment of each event right after it happened. This allowed him to monitor the history of his events and notice and celebrate the improvements in each event as well his own experience over time. If you have an event or experience that repeats periodically, consider what criteria matters most to you. Here are a few other examples to inspire you:

* Spring Cleaning:

* Number of items donated to charity

* Best cleaning materials

* Family Teamwork

* Team Pool Tournament

* Pre-match pep-talk

* Skill level matchups

* Post tournament celebrations

* Annual Halloween Party

* Best new decoration

* Guest favorite spooky appetizer dish

* Pieces of candy given to trick-or-treaters

Our insights and observations fade over time, so capturing these ideas immediately following an event provides the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Product Links

Taylor swift albums on Spotify

Pink Fuzzy Cat ears

Taylor Swift Biography

Taylor Swift Party Decorations

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

About our Guests

Michelle (AKA Shelly) de la Calle is Director of System Integration at County of Santa Clara Health System. You can find Michelle on LinkedIn.

Sue Lueder is one of the podcasters and founders of the Hindsight Retros Project, and Michelle’s sister. She can be found on LinkedIn.

Jack Lueder is the father of Sue and Michelle and a retired aerospace engineer from Lockheed Martin.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Instead of complex open-ended questions, ask specific, finite questions. E.g. instead of “Which of your possessions are important to you?” a question like “What are the top three things in this room that are most important to keep?” Open-ended questions are harder to answer, whereas specific and finite questions are easy and approachable and can give you enough data points that you can start to guess how they would answer questions you might discover later.

Ask for help from your support system. Many of us default to struggling with frustration silently, but our friends and family may be happy to hear you vent and/or discuss solutions. And pay it back – when you’re in a place of stability, pay it back, be the support others need.

It could be valuable to have a pre-action briefing, assigning tasks, setting up a safe word, overcommunicating about expectations – before activity has started, and while everybody’s calm.

The move into assisted living is not always a fun one, but it’s easier to talk about before an emergency makes it an absolute necessity. It will be a smoother transition if the elders are relatively healthy physically and mentally during the move, and most facilities have a sliding scale of assistance. Here are some tips:

* When you broach the subject, make sure it’s during a relaxed time and everyone is alert and ready to discuss.

* Give them a heads up that you want to have the talk and try not to surprise them.

* When discussing the reasons for the move, focus on their wellbeing and safety, and emphasize the positive aspects of these facilities, such as less work for them, more social interaction, and oftentimes better amenities such as meals and environment.

* If your parents have friends or family members who have already moved, have your parents talk to them to get their impressions and (hopefully) sing the praises of their new situation.

* Talk about the reasons to move proactively, before assistance becomes a critical need – that is, before parents lose more of their faculties or health.

When setting up the new place, be thoughtful about what makes a living place a “home.” How do you make a new space feel like your own? It’s going to be different for everyone, but with the right questions and introspection you can prepare a new space to be your home with less risk of transfer trauma. Here are some ideas:

* Think about the important spaces within a home, like a place to read mail, an armchair to read books, or a comfy couch to watch Netflix. Involve your parents in identifying and recreating these homey spaces. Even better if you can set them up before the move date so that they’re ready straight away.

* Clutter can be a big problem for anyone in a new home, but for parents who may be more prone to overwhelm it can be even worse. Think about creating a spot to capture those miscellaneous items that don't have a storage location and help your parents get them organized.

* Many parents may be attached to personal rituals like cooking, gardening, or laundry – things that might be handled by the assisted living facility. Sue and Shelly’s parents liked to cook, and make coffee. If space permits, it can be comforting to bring the gear for those activities, even if it’s not technically necessary, to help relieve the feeling of losing control or freedom.

* Review the decor in the original home, and identify new spots in the new place and don't delay in getting these into place. Digital photo frames can be a great housewarming gift.

* Find family photos to post around the home. If one or more of your parents are dealing with memory issues, they may have trouble associating the new location with the word “home;” Sue and Shelly had luck using the term “new home” to help bridge this gap. The reminder that a change is occurring may help the person with memory issues feel less disoriented.

It can be valuable to do research to figure out a reasonable timeframe for a project – e.g. you can search how long it takes to pack up and move out of a house of a certain size.

Best Practice Links

Assisted Living Move Checklist

What is Transfer Trauma and How to Avoid It

Product Links

Digital Picture Frame

For getting rid of stuff:

* https://buynothingproject.org/

* https://www.goodwill.org/

* https://www.freecycle.org/

* https://www.habitat.org/

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Email us at [email protected]

* Follow us on Instagram

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

About our Guests

John Reese is a weird fiction novelist, podcaster, and former SRE at Google and Robinhood. You can find John on LinkedIn and Medium.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Gamification as a powerful mind tool

Gamification refers to the use of game design tactics and strategies in non-game environments to motivate and engage us. It takes advantage of our evolved desire for achievement, competition, and recognition to make everyday or less enjoyable tasks more enjoyable. Here's how you could apply gamification to your next home improvement project:

* Points, Levels, and Leaderboards: Turn your project into a game with points! Award yourself points for completing tasks, like gathering contractor bids or installing GFCI outlets. Keep a leaderboard to track your progress and see how you stack up against your family (or even your past self!).

* Badges: Celebrate milestones with badges. Snaked the drain? You've earned the "Plumbing Pro" badge! Give yourself a gold star, a funny sticker, or even create a digital badge.

* Challenges or Quests: Inject some friendly competition with challenges. For example, launch a "Bargain Finder Challenge" to see who can find the best deal on a designer light fixture.

* Progress Bars: Visualize your progress with a progress bar. As you check items off your to-do list, watch your progress bar fill up and motivate you to keep going.

* Rewards: Set up a reward system for completing tasks or reaching milestones. Finished the kitchen counter? Treat yourself to a new espresso machine!

Building a Relationship with Your Past and Future Selves

A cornerstone of the Hindsight Retros approach is blamelessness—including forgiving ourselves when things don’t go as planned. Instead of dwelling on shortcomings or past mistakes, we can choose to express deep gratitude to our past selves for the effort and decisions that brought us to where we are today.

This mindset not only fosters self-compassion but also inspires us to invest in our present selves. By recognizing the value of the work we do today, we can set up our future selves for success and bring our hopes and dreams closer to reality.

Activation energy and getting your momentum going

Newton’s First Law of Motion states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. This principle often applies to our bodies and minds as well—getting off the couch, whether literally or figuratively, can feel like an insurmountable task. However, once you’re in motion, it’s much easier to stay in motion.

The key is to find simple, low-effort ways to spark that initial movement and engage your brain. Even if the immediate outcome isn’t perfect—what you create might land in the "garbage hole"—the true victory lies in getting started and building momentum towards the next milestone.

Books like Atomic Habits or Make Your Bed or The War of Art offer valuable strategies to overcome resistance and take that first step toward tackling big challenges. The secret? Start small and let momentum do the rest.

Helpful Links

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

* https://hindsightretros.substack.com/p/jtrs-2024-national-novel-editing

* https://nanowrimo.org/

* https://jjttrr.medium.com/i-finished-the-first-draft-of-my-novel-f65f92721832

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

* https://obsidian.md/

* Books about writing and creativity:

* On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000-10-03)

* The Artist's Way: 25th Anniversary Edition (Audible Audio Edition): Julia Cameron, Eliza Foss, Penguin Audio

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

About our Guests

Josh Watson is a semi-professional pool player and coach sponsored by BeCue and JamUp apparel. He plays for American Poolplayers Association and runs a BCA pool league in San Diego, California. You can find him on instagram @josh_watson_pool_player

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Prioritize your mental game as well as your physical game. In pastimes as complex as the game of pool, your performance is directly connected to both your physical state – rest, hydration, fuel – as well as your mental state – positive mindset, resilience to setbacks, finding joy in the game. Avoid spiraling into negativity by trying techniques like meditative breathing and cognitive behavioral therapy to train your mind to be more resilient.

Luck is ever-present In games and experiences like the game of pool, there’s no avoiding the luck factor, both positive and negative. Maximize your leverage of good luck by recognizing it and trying to recreate those conditions in future events. In cases of bad luck, manage your mental game when these setbacks happen, and prevent them from triggering negative spirals.

Preparation pays off. Famous professional pool player Efren Reyes said: “I got lucky. But The More I Practice The Luckier I Get!” For important hobbies and pastimes where performance matters to you, find the time to practice and build a strong foundation from which to perform. In pool, table time and a consistent pre-shot routine are essential for developing the skills and muscle memory needed to play at a high level. Use mistakes and failures as opportunities to explore the boundaries of your ability and input to the next practice session.

Find your flow state and nurture joy. Josh explains how adopting a mindset of "letting go" and trusting his skills, rather than overthinking, can lead to a flow state where he plays effortlessly. In many activities and sports, mental focus and a sense of rhythm are crucial for success. This state of being allows us to enjoy not only the outcomes, but also the joy in the game. Finding balance between challenge and enjoyment is important for maintaining passion and preventing burnout, particularly in pursuits that require long-term dedication.

Product Links

JamUp Pool Apparel

BeCue

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

About our Guests

Brent Chapman is an expert in incident management; every year he hones that expertise as a member of the Burning Man emergency services team, and he has introduced or formalized incident management at Google, Slack, and other tech companies. In this episode, he explains why incident management practices are so flexible and useful, and how they can be applied to situations in our personal lives, such as the high stakes problem of preparing a holiday meal for your family. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Applying incident management ideas to personal situations: Incident Management relies on structured practices, roles, and responsibilities to maximize outcomes in high stress and high stakes situations. Not sure if the ideas make sense to apply to your case? Here are some criteria to consider:

* Are coordination needs complex? Could there be conflicting demands on scarce resources, such as the oven for baking?

* Could emotions be running high, resulting in poorer communication or decision making than usual? Are there complicating factors such as complex family histories, new relationships, or previous dramatic or disappointing results?

* Is there a higher than usual chance of an unexpected event impacting the success or failure of the experience?

Adapting to Different Contexts: While the formal structure of incident management may not always be appropriate for personal settings, many of its underlying principles could be adapted to help. For instance, instead of formally designating an "incident commander," a family member might naturally take on a leadership role during a move or event, facilitating communication and task delegation in a less structured manner, or establishing special rules for a particular space or timeframe in your situation.

Setting the stage for a successful experience: One tip that can help start the experience off on the right foot is a pre-event briefing, where the group takes a moment to outline the road ahead, the contingency plans, the expected communication, and the roles. This is also an opportunity for the participants to share what they hope to get out of the experience. This could be a successful experiment of a new recipe, or a closer connection with a distant relative.

Make room for learning: Increase enjoyment and successful outcomes by encouraging participants to take on new roles and giving them support and training in learning the ropes. Few are experts at a craft right away, so allow people to take on new challenges in a safe way, through dry-runs, shadowing, or demonstrating skills with narration.

Links

https://esd.burningman.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_Command_System

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

LuBudingJoy Blank Recipe Notebook

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Email us at [email protected]

* Follow us on Instagram

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

Record Date: August 12, 2024

Guests: Julie and Erik

Episode Comic

About our Guests

Julie and Erik are intellectual property attorneys currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota with their young son.

Main Takeaways from this Episode

Consider needs: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says it’s hard to focus on things like fun when you’re feeling uncertainty about foundational needs like safety, shelter, and food. And sometimes you have to tend to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of your travel companions, especially when one of them is a kid. (On one of my own trips, I can point to a travel companion’s Maslow’s Hierarchy to understand why he lost his temper when we were goofing around while he was still feeling uncertain about where we were going to sleep.)

Engage support: The parents took turns, or divided-to-conquer, to prevent either one from getting exhausted. A broad chosen family of friends helped take the load off the parents. And one of the best ways to offer help is to show up with no agenda of your own, aside from having fun.

Embrace serendipity: if you keep in mind the core goals of the vacation (e.g. to make sure the kid has fun and forms terrific memories), not being too fixated on the specific outcome of any one plan allows you to adapt and still achieve those goals. E.g. there may be no barbecue pits available, or the park may have been taken over by a parade, but your friends and family can help you make the most of that time another way.

Take your time: You can keep some unplanned time at the end of the trip to repeat any activities you discovered everyone particularly enjoyed. Closing with “greatest hits” helps cement positive memories.

Best Practice Links

Contingency Planning is related to a project premortem; both are about considering what you would do if various things went wrong. Sometimes a single strategy (e.g. be ready to same-day order a missing object off of Amazon) may be able to address multiple potential situations.

The Checklist Manifesto talks about the benefits of building and using checklists in fields like flying airplanes and practicing medicine; the benefits extend to personal domains like travel planning as well. If you use a checklist and you forget to pack something, you can add it to the checklist to ensure you don’t forget next time.

Product Links

Dog Man: Julie and Erik’s son’s favorite books to read on the airplane.

Foldable Childs Toilet Seat

Sunscreen

San Diego Tourism Authority - Travel Resources for SD Region 

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

Record Date: June 17, 2024

Guests: Sue Lueder & John T. Reese

Episode Comic

About our Guests

Sue Lueder is the host of this podcast and this time also a guest. She has a love of old Craftsman homes but sometimes forgets how much extra work they can be. She can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/suelue/ 

Main Takeaways from this Episode

* Set boundaries with home improvement contractors: Home improvement projects can be a source of many lessons learned. Although it’s not possible to prevent every mishap, you can establish clear boundaries and expectations with home workers before they start the work, preventing future conflicts. Build rapport and good communication with tradespeople, especially when they do repeat work.

* Know what projects might require expert help: It can be tempting to save money and time by putting on your toolbelt and solving problems yourself. But some projects require domain knowledge to avoid costly or smelly mistakes. Here are some resources to help in case of future situations  

* When to DIY or Hire a Professional for Home Improvements

* DIY HOME IMPROVEMENT vs HIRING A PRO (Which is best for your finances?)

* DIY vs. Professional Pest Control: Which Is Best For You?

* Prioritize your todo list: It’s incredibly easy to get busy with the fun stuff in our lives and kick tedious or complicated projects down the road. Find a productivity system to help you tackle those todo lists and reward yourself when you cross things off. John’s shared Getting Things Done in previous episodes, and one of Sue’s favorites is Bullet Journaling, which adds a bit of visual flair to your system. There are many great options and guides out there.

* Find partners, not just experts: Sometimes you might want to 100% outsource a project and wipe your hands of it, but if the solution is something you might need again or you need to own ongoing maintenance, find solution providers that are willing to share their expertise with you. Search reviews for signs that these providers do more than just services rendered. These are review quotes for the pest service provider Talos from the Rat Invasion story:

* “I felt like all of my questions and concerns were thoroughly addressed…”

* “He also asked if there were any specific areas or instructions and listened attentively as I walked the areas with him. Very polite, professional, and diligent at his work”

* “Their tradesmen process great knowledge  of their subject matter and are willing to share.”

Additional info and wildlife cam pictures can be found in Sues Rat Invasion Hindsight Retro

Product Links

* Victor Traps

* The Outdoor Expert Mini Trail Camera 

* Earth Care Odor Removing Bag

Contact

* Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

* Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

* Follow John Reese on LinkedIn

Record Date: 2024-08-04

(Apologies if you're seeing this twice -- we had some difficulties with the podcast platform this morning. This updated version includes the comics.)

Brad and Cristina, a married couple in Zürich, write an annual retrospective every year the week before the New Year, and have used it to strengthen their relationship and improve their lives.

About our Guests

Brad Kratochvil is a Software Engineering Director in Site Reliability Engineering in Google Zürich. He grew up on a farm in Nebraska. He can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkratochvil/

Cristina Vintila is a Staff Security Engineering Manager in the Google Cloud Office of the Chief Information Security Officer in Google Zürich. She grew up on a farm in Romania. She can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinavintila/

Main Takeaways from this Episode

An annual retrospective practice can help us be more intentional about our lives and relationships. Having a set time and place for a retrospective ritual can help cement it and make it a regular part of your life.

Challenging conversations can be easier when walking together, outdoors, in nature – and facing in the same direction and walking. Together, these factors help you feel like you’re solving problems together, in a non-competitive environment.

If you know you have certain behaviors under stress that you don’t like, it can be useful to discuss those with your partner (or friends or family) during a calm time, and, if you’re comfortable, let them know they can call you out on them if you start to behave that way.

People have different risk tolerance, but open communication and preparation can help reduce the distance: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. And stretching, over time, can extend our capabilities and comfort level.

Sometimes it’s easier to apply blamelessness to other people than to ourselves. In situations where we blame ourselves, a useful question is: would I say this to my best friend? And if you wouldn’t, you probably shouldn’t say it to yourself.

We have limited time on this mortal plane; making a list of all the things you want to get done makes it more likely you’ll be able to do more of those things, especially as some of them may become harder to do as you get older.

Blamelessness is even more important when the stakes are high.

Best Practice Links

Annual Retro template (which includes some recommendations for bookstores, coffee shops, TV shows, books, bars, food, and travel).

jtr’s weekly checklist

Product Links

Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman.

Contact

Follow us at hindsightretros.substack.com

Read more at hindsightretros.com

Email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Instagram @hindsightretros

Follow Sue Lueder on LinkedIn

Follow John Reese on LinkedIn